After a two-year hiatus from working in the Jewish community, Rabbi Kelley Gludt, former director of congregational learning at Beth Am Synagogue, is returning to work as a Jewish professional at Columbia Jewish Congregation.
Starting this year, Gludt is the B’Yachad: Oakland Mills Jewish School’s education director — the first B’Yachad education director to be a part of the congregation’s staff.
The Jewish school was established in 2022 as a collaborative effort between Columbia Jewish Congregation and Kol Nefesh, which share space in the Oakland Mills Interfaith Center in Columbia.
While the school operated as a separate entity to the Columbia Jewish Congregation in the past, this year it is taking over administrative control.
In anticipation of the departure of the school’s previous education director, Emily Dalton, Rabbi Michael Hess Webber said the congregation was looking to create a more robust position, broadening the scope of the education director’s responsibilities.
“We were gobsmacked when we received Rabbi Kelley’s application for the position,” Webber wrote in an email to the Baltimore Jewish Times. “She is a Jewish educator with a really impressive track record as an education director who breathes new life into Jewish educational spaces. She is adored, big time, in the communities that she has led. Once we met her, we, too, adored her.”
After spending more than a decade at Beth Am, Gludt, a Mount Washington resident, said, “I thought it was time for new challenges and new things.”
She and her family opened a franchise of Woofie’s, a mobile pet-grooming, dog-walking and pet-sitting business.
Two years later, while still a member of Beth Am, Gludt told the Baltimore Jewish Times, “I really missed being a part of the Jewish world.”
Ordained in 2005 at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, a Conservative seminary on the West Coast, Gludt spent six years working in Tucson, Arizona. She then came to Baltimore to create the Jewish Discovery Lab at Beth Am, working alongside Rabbi Daniel Burg.
“[Beth Am] is still something very near and dear to my heart,” she said.
Missing her work in the Jewish world, Gludt decided to browse open positions and found Columbia Jewish Congregation.
“Once a Jewish professional, always a Jewish professional,” Gludt said. “I started looking around, and I was like, I’m only going to take something part time, and I’m only going to take what’s like really speaks to my soul. And this position came up at CJC, and it was such a good match. I can’t even begin to tell you — there was just no way I wasn’t going to apply for this job.”
For Columbia Jewish Congregation, the feeling was mutual.
“Her heart is immense, her love for this work is immense, and the energy she puts into dreaming and scheming makes her very fun to have as a colleague,” Webber stated. “She is a great listener who asks the right questions. I am very proud that she is CJC’s Education Director and I am really excited to see what we build from here.”
According to the rabbi, the congregation is looking to broaden its programming for its youngest members beyond the classroom and Gludt hopes to do the same, instilling in them strong Jewish identities.
“Baltimore is such a Jewish place to live that sometimes your identity — it’s just easier — it’s … in everything. It’s everywhere you go,” she said. “I’m in a place now where these kids might actually be one of the only Jewish kids in their classrooms … that doesn’t happen in Baltimore in the same way.”
mresnicow@midatlanticmedia.com
