Rabbi Rebecca Blady

Rabbi Rebecca Blady is the co-founder and Executive Director of Hillel Germany. She also provides rabbinical accompaniment for the Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich Studienwerk (ELES) scholarship program in Germany. In her capacity as Hillel Executive Director, Rebecca's key accomplishments include growing the organization's budget four-fold from 2019 to 2023; building and professionalizing staff teams; and adapting Hillel International's innovative Engagement Internship program as a tool for empowerment and growth in German Jewish communities.

Prior to Hillel Germany, she co-founded Base Berlin with her husband, Rabbi Jeremy Borovitz, and worked at Hillel's Office of Innovation in New York City. Rebecca also co-initiated Ze Kollel, a pan-European communal learning space geared towards in-depth, text-based, committed Jewish learning, and an incubator for developing new talent and creative Europe-based teachers rooted in Jewish text and tradition. Rebecca speaks widely on topics of Jewish identity, Jewish feminism, and pluralistic approaches to combating right-wing extremism and antisemitism, including, in 2023, at the Fritz Bauer Institut (Frankfurt am Main), the World Union of Jewish Students's IMPACT Fellowship, the Obermayer Foundation's Widen the Circle program, and the Berlin Center for Political Education. She has published essays in a variety of books about Jewish identity and other topics in Germany.

While at Maharat, she completed rabbinic internships at the Prospect Heights Shul and ImmerseNYC. Rebecca holds a B.A. cum laude from Brandeis University and is a certified yoga instructor. A proud granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, Rebecca advocates for every individual Jewish story. She lives in Berlin, Germany.