Scholar in Residence

Rabbi Charni Flame Selch grew up in a Conservative household; celebrating holidays, attending synagogue services and Hebrew school.

Rabbi Selch has lived in the United States, Canada and Israel and served with the Israel Defense Forces.  After finishing her army service, she worked as an actress and theater director before moving into the field of television production.

Her documentary, ‘Structure of Memory’, about the building of the Holocaust memorial in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, won an honorable mention in a Beit Hat’fusot International contest.  Her news special 'The Silent Majority: The Issue of Unaffiliation in the Jewish Community' was shown on national television in the U.S. and Canada.

Rabbi Selch earned her Bachelor's Degree in Organizational Management from Columbia Union College in Maryland. She also received degrees in Television Production, Broadcast Arts and Theater Design from schools in Canada and Israel.

She became a rabbi because she believes that Judaism isn’t going to survive unless we have dynamic leaders with fresh interpretations.

She was ordained by JTS.

As a congregational rabbi, she has served communities in Israel, Canada and the US. She was the New England regional director for the Curriculum Initiative and has been a congregational education director. 

She was selected as one of nineteen rabbis nationally for the first STAR PEER Executive Leadership Program for Rabbis.

Rabbi Selch believes that we as a community need rabbis who can relate to congregants’ challenges and with whom congregants can identify. She knows, from firsthand experience that being a practicing Jew in this day and age is not simple, but that it is possible.

Rabbi Selch’s philosophy: Judaism shouldn’t be spectator sport. It is meant to be approachable and personal and do-able and never to be watched from the side-lines.

• Rashi, Rambam and Rashamon - How Diverse Opinions Form Our Understanding of Judaism
• Creating New Traditions: Conservative Judaism as a Meaningful Way of Life
• Small Congregations – Facing Challenges and Realizing Communal Potential
• Studying Tanach: Finding Ourselves in Our Ancestors' Stories
• Domestic Violence Awareness, Inclusion, Jews in Movies, Jewish Theater, Jewish Topics from a woman rabbi's perspective, Intermarried families