Fountain Board Member Rabbi Anne Brener, LCSW, is an author, psychotherapist and spiritual director, specializing in grief and healing. She assists institutions in creating caring communities and is in her twenty-third year as Professor of Ritual and Spiritual Development at the Academy for Jewish Religion, California, where she trains Rabbinic, Cantorial and Chaplaincy students. Rabbi Anne is the author of the acclaimed Mourning & Mitzvah: Walking the Mourner's Path (Jewish Lights), in print since 1993 and now in its third edition, and has contributed chapters to many publications. She served as a bereavement chaplain for Skirball Hospice in Los Angeles and was a founding faculty member at Morei Derekh- Jewish Spiritual Direction Program and of Project Sanctuary, one of the country's first shelters for Battered Women and their Children. Anne is passionate about the role of the community in healing. She works to de-pathologize the language we use to discuss normal life transitions, such as grief, that should be met with ritual and community response.. Anne has studied at The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and earned Master’s Degrees in Jewish Communal Service and Jewish Letters, as well as Rabbinic Ordination and an Honorary Doctorate in Jewish Communal Service. She also holds Master's Degrees in Social Work from the University of Southern California and in Broadcast Communications from San Francisco State University. She has served on the Board of Aleph: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal, started by one of her teachers, Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi and leads a weekly morning meditation service for Aleph on Zoom, which you are welcome to join. Anne grew up in New Orleans. Her daughter, Jen Leeb, lives in Portland, Oregon.