Rabbi Batsheva Appel

Rabbi Batsheva Appel is the current Director of Rabbinic Services.  The Rabbinic program was started four years ago to serve small congregations without rabbinic leadership throughout the region.  Rabbi Appel succeeded Rabbi Debra Kassoff, who after finishing her term at the Institute became an assistant rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Marblehead, Massachusetts.  Rabbi Appel looks forward to building on the strong foundation which Rabbi Kassoff established for the department. 

A native of Seattle, Washington, Rabbi Appel lived all over the country as a child because her father was an engineer with the Boeing Company.  The family lived in New Orleans, Florida, and Huntsville, Alabama before moving back to Seattle.  Rabbi Appel graduated from Wellesley College with a B.A. in Biological Sciences and Economics.  After several years of working in the biotechnology field, she decided to change careers.  She became active in her synagogue, taking courses, studying Torah, singing in the choir, and serving on the Board of Trustees.  As she puts it “the more I was involved, the more I wanted to be involved and the more that I studied, the more I wanted to study, until I wanted to do this as a full-time job.”

Rabbi Appel was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1996.  She was sabbatical Rabbi at Temple Emanu-El in Lynbrook, New York and then stayed to become Rabbi-Educator and run a religious school of over 300 students.  In 2001 she became the first ever Assistant Rabbi at Congregation Beth Chaim of Princeton Junction, New Jersey and was soon named as Associate Rabbi.

She believes that “Jewish learning is transformative and that stories are the best way to transmit the values of Judaism; so I am very happy to be part of the ISJL which emphasizes both the importance of learning and the importance of stories.”

In her spare time Rabbi Appel is an avid knitter who is very proud of the four blue ribbons she won at the Middletown Grange Fair in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

If you would like to contact Rabbi Appel, you can email her at appel@isjl.org or call (601) 362-6357.