On today’s episode, we welcome Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, whose work explores life’s cycles through two powerful lenses: environmental stewardship and infertility. We discuss the responsibilities individuals and communities have to one another, the elasticity of ritual, and how Jewish practice can help us turn lemons into lemonade.
Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin is an author, activist, Director of Jewish Life at the JCC in Baltimore, and founder of the Jewish Women’s Resource Center. She was also among the first women ordained as Conservative rabbis.
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This guidebook is for anyone sitting with someone in pain and not knowing what to say. For anyone in pain who wishes someone would simply sit with them. For the grandparent who wants to help but worries about saying the wrong thing. For the friend who keeps meaning to call.
You don’t need to be a practicing Jew to use it. You don’t need to believe in God in any particular way, or at all. What you need is a willingness to show up for another person, and perhaps a little guidance on how.
The Jewish tradition has a word for this kind of presence: rachamim (compassion), rooted in the Hebrew word for womb. To be present with someone in pain is to hold them the way a womb holds: not fixing, not rushing, simply making room. This guidebook is about how to do that.
Founder of the Jewish Resource Center
Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin is an author, activist, and environmental leader. Throughout her career, she has been a pioneer in both Jewish communal life and pastoral care. She founded the Jewish Women’s Resource Center and the Pregnancy Loss Peer Counseling Program, helped establish the New York Jewish Healing Center, and led several environmental initiatives, including the Baltimore Jewish Environmental Network and the Baltimore Orchard Project.
She currently chairs the Masorti Movement Sustainability Roundtable and founded the Maryland Campaign for Environmental Human Rights, which advocates for a constitutional right to a healthy environment.
Rabbi Cardin earned her MA in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in 1979 and was ordained there in 1988 as a member of the institution’s first class of women rabbis. She is the author of numerous articles and books, including Tears of Sorrow, Seeds of Hope: A Jewish Spiritual Companion for Infertility and Pregnancy Loss.
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