RABBI Tamara Miller
You Are the Book: A Spiritual Memoir
By Rabbi Tamara Miller
Welcome and thank you for visiting this page to learn more about my book, You Are the Book. I have poured my heart and soul into this memoir, and it has been a labor of love. ​I look forward to sharing my story with you.
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-Rabbi Tamara Miller
Synopsis
Coming to her rabbinical role at the age of 48, Tamara Miller was still uncertain of her own authority when she was faced with a young man in spiritual crisis, on the verge of abandoning the traditions of the Jewish people. Still grieving over the recent death of her beloved father, Rabbi Benjamin Miller, Tamara turned to her memory of him for answers. "Tell me which book to consult, which words to read that will allow me to help this boy," she begged his spirit. "Tamara, you don't need a book to show you the way," came the sound of his voice in her head. "Everything you need to know is already inside you. You are the book."
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She knew in an instant that her father was right.
His message not only gave her the confidence to talk the young man through his crisis, but it came to inform her life on every level. Through a series of personal and often startling stories that include a midlife divorce, two shootings, an unjust termination from a very public job, and an emotional trip to Europe to visit the sites of her family's holocaust losses, Rabbi Miller strives to reconcile the two opposing truths of her life: that she is carrying on a tradition stretching back for generations in her family--and at the same time, rebelling against that tradition which, until very recently, was the exclusive realm of men. Her fluid and nonjudgmental approach to Judaism has led her to establish a freelance rabbinic practice in Washington, D.C. that thrives outside of conventional affiliations, as she champions interfaith and interracial dialogue, blending twenty-first century insights with ancient traditions.
Throughout it all, her father’s words have become a personal slogan and a message to everyone she encounters: you are the book.
Rabbi Tamara Miller speaking at the book launch