Religious & Spiritual Life Shahar Colt

Rabbi Shahar Colt has been serving the Boston-area Jewish community since her ordination in 2016. She will be moving to the Amherst area in the summer of 2024, when she will begin her full time role at the College. In the meantime, in addition to working at Amherst College, she serves as the Executive Director of the Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston, Spiritual Leader for Congregation Ahavas Achim in Westfield, MA, and is completing a mental health chaplaincy training program at Mclean Hospital in Belmont, MA. She spent the last two years on staff at Hebrew College Rabbinical School and has served as a curriculum developer for the Center for Jewish Ethics’s Race, Religion and American Judaism project.

Previously, Shahar developed deep experience in congregational education, serving Nehar Shalom Community Synagogue as Education Director from 2020–2023 and Congregation Dorshei Tzedek as Rabbi for Congregational Learning from 2015–2020. During rabbinical school she founded the Teen Beit Midrash, a supplementary Jewish learning program for teens.

Before rabbinical school, Shahar earned her Masters in Education at Tufts University (2008), with a focus on secondary level humanities, and her Bachelors from Barnard College (2006) in American Studies, with a concentration in Education. She has taught secular academic subjects in public and private schools, general and special education classrooms, as well as swimming, dance, cooking, and woodworking in after school programs, youth groups, and summer camps. She lives in Watertown, MA, with her partner and two children.