Dayle A. Friedman

Rabbi Dayle A. Friedman is a spiritual guide, scholar, and social innovator. She has pioneered a Jewish spiritual response to the challenges and blessings of later life. She offers spiritual direction, spiritual care, and consulting through Growing Older, her Philadelphia based, national practice, www.growingolder.net. She is an adjunct faculty member of the Wurzweiler School of Social Work of Yeshiva University. Her publications include: Jewish End-of-Life Care in a Virtual Age: Our Traditions Reimagined (2020), editor; Jewish Wisdom for Growing Older: FInding Your Grit and Grace Beyond Midlife (2015), author; Jewish Pastoral Care (2nd edition, 2010), editor; and Jewish Visions for Aging (2008), author. Rabbi Friedman began her career as founding director of chaplaincy services at Philadelphia Geriatric Center, where she created novel models for Jewish life and spiritual care in a community of 1100 elders. She has mentored rabbis and chaplains, and trained professionals on spiritual dimensions of later life in the U.S., Canada and Israel. She founded and directed Hiddur: The Center for Aging and Judaism of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Rabbi Friedman was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where she also earned MA degrees in Jewish Communal Service and Hebrew Literature. She holds an MSW from the University of Southern California and a BA from Brandeis University. She is a Board-Certified chaplain. She completed a certificate in spiritual direction through the Morei Derekh training program of Yedidya Center. She was included in the 2008 Forward 50, a listing of influential American Jewish leaders, and the 2010 Sisterhood 50, a compendium of influential women rabbis.