Tobie Weisman
Tobie Weisman was born in Union, New Jersey, in 1958. Tobie's parents were employed as social workers throughout their professional careers by Jewish community organizations. When she was 13, Tobie traveled to Israel, where she was photographed with David Ben-Gurion, the young nation's first prime minister. Tobie graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1980 with a degree in Hebrew and Semitic Studies. She had been active in Hillel and had spent her junior year in Israel. She returned to the Washington, DC area, worked as a computer programmer, and joined Fabrangen, a havurah. In 1982, Tobie studied at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem before receiving her ordination from the Academy for Jewish Religion in New York City. In 1995, she married David Fried and moved to Vermont, where she raised her two daughters. Tobie is the founder and director of the Yearning for Learning Center, which sponsors spiritual and educational programs. In 2005 the center became part of a larger organization JERNE, Jewish Educational Resources of the Northeast.
Tobie details her family's background and immigration history. Her ancestors emigrated from Russia and settled in cities up and down the East Coast. Tobie's mother, Shulamith Berlin, lived in Brooklyn until Tobie's grandfather took a fancy to chicken farming and moved the family to Toms River, New Jersey. Tobie remembers snuggling with her grandmother and reveling in the stories and jokes that the older woman told her over the years. She talks about her father, Donald Weisman, born in Baltimore in 1927. He was a cantor, and Tobie sang with him at their synagogue in Olney, Maryland. Tobie highlights her early travels to Israel and meeting Former Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion. She never forgot his advice, "All you have to do is learn Hebrew, and the rest will follow." After-school Hebrew classes and summers at a Zionist children's camp – where she learned Israeli folk songs and dances – served to burnish Tobie's Hebrew skills. She recalls her experiences and education at the University of Wisconsin, her move to Washington, DC, her work there, and her involvement with Fabrangen. Tobie remembers it as "a wonderful place…where women wore tallit and led services." At Fabrangen, Tobie first led services and began to think about going to rabbinical school. In 1982 the Jewish Theological Seminary was not yet accepting women as rabbinic candidates. Frustrated, she returned to Israel to study at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. She delved deeper into Jewish learning, but a path to the rabbinate continued to elude her. Tobie tells the story of how she met and married Samuel Barth, a rabbinical student. They spent four years in England, she as the rebbetzin [rabbi's wife], still yearning to be a rabbi herself. While there, Tobie applied to several rabbinical schools but found none of them the right fit. Returning to the United States, Tobie and Sam divorced. Ironically, she found employment in New York—at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the same school she had wanted to attend. She said to herself, "This is crazy. I'm going to apply to rabbinical school…again". Finally accepted at The Academy for Jewish Religion, she completed her rabbinic training in three years. Her ordination as a rabbi in 1992 marked the culmination of a decade-long spiritual and educational quest. Tobie explains that her long journey was inspired and sustained by the example of her grandmother, who had been a Hebrew School teacher for more than 50 years. Tobie met David Fried during one of his trips to New York City. When they married in 1995, she joined him at Elmore Roots Nursery, his organic fruit tree farm near Montpelier, Vermont.
