Rabbi Alissa Wise

Rabbi Alissa Wise is an organizational consultant, community organizer, educator, and ritual leader with over two decades of movement-building experience. She is the Lead Organizer of Rabbis for Ceasefire which she founded in October 2023.

Then

Alissa was interim Co-Executive Director at Jewish Voice for Peace, where she also served as National Organizer, Co-Director of Organizing, and Co-Deputy Director. At JVP she supported the Presbyterian Church-USA’s divestment from the Israeli occupation, grew JVP’s organizing program from six chapters to over 60, contributed to an organization-wide Racial Justice Transformation process, and supported the organization in raising over $3 million from more than 5000 donors. Prior to joining the JVP staff in 2011, she was a member-leader and co-founder of the JVP Rabbinical Council in 2010. Since leaving JVP in 2021, she has been serving as the Rabbinical Council’s co-chair.

She has served as the Education Director at Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) where she created the Grace Paley Organizing Fellowship, Program Director at Ma’yan, a former project at the JCC of Manhattan, chaplain at Planned Parenthood, and Education Director at String of Pearls Congregation in Princeton. She became a rabbi in 2009 at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC). She was a 2007 Selah Leadership Program Participant and 2001-2002 Avodah Jewish Service Corps member in New York City. Alissa spent her summers during rabbinical school documenting human rights abuses by Israeli military and settlers with the International Women’s Peace Service on the West Bank. 

Now

I co-create life cycle rituals with people who are interested in making meaning from and marking time by Jewish traditions, mostly collaborating with those in multifaith, queer and/or anti-Zionist families.

I consult with a variety of nonprofit organizations on strategy, leadership, organizing, and more. Current and past clients include:

• Women for Afghan Women
• Hindus for Human Rights
• Real Food Generation
• Al Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network
• Nonprofit New York

I am proud to be a member of the inaugural cohort of the Faith Matters Network 2022-2024 Rooted in Resilience Fellowship, where I get a chance to dream and vision big and deep.

I am currently working on two book projects. The first is a collaboration with Rebecca Vilkomerson, forthcoming from Haymarket Books in 2024, that collects the organizing lessons from our decade at JVP for the benefit of all those seeking to build sustainable, functioning organizations and movements against towering odds.

The other is a Jewish anti-Zionist theology anthology, forthcoming from Wayne State University Press in 2025. I am supporting Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg with organizing the anthology which will be a first-of-its-kind collection exploring, with a range of voices and perspectives, the Jewish theology, thought, philosophy, and spiritual lives that emerge from and feed into anti-zionist Judaisms.

When not teaching, facilitating or organizing, I am honing my skills as an urban gardener and antiracist parent. I love hiking with my pup Frankie and finding a good reason to celebrate.