Rabbi Michelle Fisher

Rabbi Michelle H. Fisher SM ’97 is the Executive Director of MIT Hillel, a job that now synthesizes her two academic courses of studies. As an undergraduate at Princeton University and as a graduate student at MIT, she studied organic chemistry. She received a Wexner Graduate Fellowship to study at the Jewish Theological Seminary in NY, from which she received her ordination in 2002. Before returning to MIT in her current role, Rabbi Fisher served as the Associate Rabbi of Congregation Har Shalom in Potomac, MD and the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Shalom in Walnut Creek, CA. She also served as a Naval Chaplain Candidate, ministering to Jewish and non-Jewish sailors and Marines.

Rabbi Fisher has a passion for teaching, and for helping Jews of all ages travel along the paths of their Jewish journeys. She loves the questioning and exploring that is inherent in the lives of emerging adults on the college campus, and is inspired by the dream that every MIT Jew will graduate from the Institute being able to see their lives, including the work they do in science and engineering, through a Jewish lens. She describes her second career at MIT as “the mothership calling her home,” and she’s thrilled every day to be at the Institute.