An interview with Dr. Susie Tanchel and Rabbi Daniel Klein

Condensed and edited by Adina Kay-Gross

In recent years, faculty on campuses across the country—from small liberal arts colleges to major research universities—have supported student populations in crisis. Many students began college during the pandemic; others, including rabbinical students, delivered their first sermons in the shadow of the October 7 attacks.  

Educators have been called to teach, mentor, and counsel students through overlapping domestic and global crises, drawing again and again on deep reserves of personal resilience. This work has required cultivating their own inner lives, reexamining beliefs and pedagogies, and modeling openness and growth. Perhaps most essential has been teaching students how to engage one another with respect—how to listen, disagree, and even argue with care. 

Recent years have tested even the steadiest campus leaders. For the Jewish community, however, few moments have been as fraught as the time since October 7. At Hebrew College, a pluralistic, transdenominational institution that prepares rabbis and Jewish leaders to serve diverse communities, Vice President Dr. Susie Tanchel and Dean Rabbi Daniel Klein have been leading intentional efforts to foster thoughtful, peaceful dialogue among students. 

In a recent conversation about cultivating productive dialogue on campus, Tanchel and Klein reflected on the period following the October 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing war. In the midst of shock and grief, they knew the only way forward was to continue the work they were charged with: teaching Jewish students how to be Jewish leaders in community. 

“We were processing our own feelings and managing our own responses to the attack, and at the same time we had to lead a pluralistic institution,” Tanchel said. “We needed to quickly figure out how to hold ourselves accountable—to ourselves, and to our community.” 

“We decided to engage students in dialogue around leadership,” she continued. “Our students are going to be leading institutions very soon. We needed to think with them about what it would mean to lead a community through a crisis like this, and what it would mean to hold ourselves responsible, too.” 

Establishing the guardrails needed for dialogue to remain constructive and healthy—and a dedicated focus on the wellbeing of their students—was already central to both leaders’ work. With support from a Covenant Foundation Signature Grant, Klein and Tanchel launched a series of professional development workshops focused on spiritual formation among future rabbis, alongside an introductory course designed to help rabbis serve their communities with compassion and humility. The project  aimed to nurture the inner lives of rabbinic students to cultivate resilience, through the teachings, practices, and resources available through our  Jewish tradition. 

For Tanchel, a 2018 Covenant Award recipient who directs the Master’s in Jewish Education program at Hebrew College, and previously spent nine years as head of Boston’s Jewish Community Day School, leading through difficult moments was not new—though this moment was unprecedented. Through their work,both Tanchel and Klein understood deeply the importance of giving their students the tools to process difficult events, withstand the pressure of being in community in times of crisis, and then learn to lead from the heart. They knew they needed to start by providing a safe space in which people could talk and share. 

“In addition to our work with Rabbinical students, we held open forums for our MJED students,” Tanchel said, “because they were on the front lines in their own communities, working in different educational contexts and being asked to lead in real time.” Some students, she explained, were early in their careers and struggling to navigate their own emotions while supporting others. “It was a very painful time.” 

For both Tanchel and Klein, grounding themselves and their students in middot—core virtues—was paramount. 

“We kept reminding the community of the basic middot that enable productive conversation,” Klein said. “I personally return to four: humility, curiosity, courage, and graciousness.” 

“Humility and curiosity are the most important,” he added. “Humility means, ‘I don’t have all the answers, and I will take up the right amount of space—not too much, but enough.’ Curiosity means, ‘I am not here to persuade or teach, but to be open.’” 

Tanchel emphasized listening as an active and disciplined practice. “What does it mean to truly listen to someone else?” she asked. “The first step is that when someone speaks, no one jumps in for thirty seconds. The practice is to genuinely hold space for what was just said.” 

She also highlighted the importance of reflecting back what someone has shared before responding, and offering affirmation rather than challenge. “In the early days after the attacks, when tensions were so high and blame came easily, we were very clear that dialogue was not about persuasion,” she said. “We were trying to listen with empathy and compassion—to build a container where people could speak from the heart without feeling they had to defend themselves.” 

Klein noted the additional challenge of contending with the loudest voices on campus, as in broader public life. “Those voices often carry disproportionate weight in shaping culture,” he said. “That affects people’s sense of what can and can’t be said, and what feels worth saying at all.” 

Both leaders emphasized the importance of holding nuance and complexity at the center of communal life. While shared middot provide a foundation, productive dialogue also requires bringing students into relationship with people who are not exactly like them—encouraging them to articulate convictions while remaining open to possibility. 

“At Hebrew College, we are deeply committed to being a place with no political or religious litmus tests,” Klein said. “We have expectations around middot, but when we consider whom to admit, we also ask: are you someone who can encounter difference with respect and curiosity?” 

Tanchel and Klein also spoke about the unique position rabbinical students occupy—training to lead communities while simultaneously being active members of a compassionate and kind communal ecosystem themselves, at home and on campus. 

“Toggling between those two perspectives—leader and community member—and modeling steadiness was incredibly important,” Tanchel said. “Where students were in their journey affected their capacity to hold their own feelings and appreciate what their leaders were carrying. The closer they were to leadership themselves, the more able they were to hold that complexity.” 

The path ahead for students entering Jewish communal leadership is not an easy one. Still, both leaders find hope in the continued willingness of people to step forward. 

“The statistics on clergy trauma and burnout are staggering,” Klein said. “Rates of PTSD rival those in the military, and the loneliness and divisiveness of the pulpit world are intense. And yet, people are still choosing this work. That commitment to serving community is truly inspiring.” 

For Tanchel, hope comes from the students she teaches. 

“Watching them take what they’re learning into the world—to work for justice and equity—is a profound privilege and joy,” she said.