Rabbi Melanie Levav, founder and rabbinic director, Shomer Collective, explores end-of-life discussions

Melanie is a board-certified chaplain, a licensed social worker, and a rabbi with more than two decades of leadership experience in the American Jewish community.

A native New Yorker, Melanie currently serves as the founding Rabbinic Director of the Shomer Collective, powered by Natan, a new initiative that is designed to empower individuals, families and institutions around end-of-life experiences, inspired by Jewish wisdom. Since 2018, Melanie has served as the Director of PJ Library in New York, a program of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, where she leads a New York-based team charged with growing PJ Library in New York, bringing the gift of high-quality, free children’s books into the homes of families raising Jewish children in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester. Melanie has held positions at the Marks Jewish Community House of Bensonhurst, the Mandel Center for Jewish Education at JCC Association, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and UJA-Federation of New York. An alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, Melanie was ordained as a rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary; she was certified as a chaplain by Neshama: the National Association for Jewish Chaplains, and received her graduate degree in social work from Columbia University. As a Jewish educator and rabbi, she is passionate about helping families to talk more openly about difficult subjects in order to deepen their connections to Jewish tradition and to one another. Melanie is proud to call New York City home, where she resides with her partner, a Jewish day school teacher, and their two children.