What happens to a groundbreaker when the ground keeps on breaking? In this memoir, Rabbi Rev. Haviva Ner-David powerfully chronicles her struggle to be accepted as a rabbi and scholar within the Orthodox movement, and her eventual discovery that Orthodox Judaism doesn’t fit her any longer. Along the way, she shares the love story of her marriage, her struggle with chronic illness, her path as an interfaith minister, and her pain over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Throughout the fabric of the book, Ner-David weaves in the bright thread of her dreamwork practice, showing how, over time, her dreams tell her the truth of her life and reveal her path forward. A must-read for anyone who has changed more than they expected—or anyone who wants to learn how dreams can open the door to a new life.

How did a nice Jewish girl from the Orthodox New York suburbs become a post-denominational interspiritual rabbi minister? By following her heart step-by-fascinating-step through the difficult work of being human. In Dreaming Against the Current, Haviva Ner-David invites readers to gently brush away the excuses and justifications that keep them from living fully. Throughout the pages, she models how to gaze lovingly at our disappointments, missteps, and lingering heartbreaks to seek the healing lessons these outcast moments can offer. Weaving together religion, spirituality, and personal introspection, Ner-David creates a glorious tapestry that inspires each of us to become the artisan of a meaningful and sacred life.

Reverend Rabbi Haviva Ner David blesses us with her third and most powerful memoir yet. Her journey from a healing woman of Judaism to a healing woman of all of humanity brings with it stunning insights, aching moments of clarity, and a glimpse of what it means to live a life of freedom. Haviva is one of the most honest, compassionate, and caring writers, and demonstrates what it means to live with authenticity and loyalty to oneself and the universal spirit. The story, threaded between lofty dreams and the mundane of everyday existence, is a wonderful teaching about life.

Haviva's beautifully-written Dreaming Against the Current is a glorious interplay of daily living, dreams, and powerful spiritual realizations. As such, it has called me to a deeper level of trust, surrender, and authenticity in my own life and spiritual practice. In learning more about Rabbi Reverend Ner-David's devout practices and the depth of being they have developed in her, I am inspired. I suspect this book will extend such a gift to all its readers.

A significant contribution to the literature chronicling the inner lives of the bravest, boundary-breaking Jewish spiritual seekers.

Dreaming Against the Current offers a searingly honest witness to the inner work of leadership formation at the intersection of deep traditional commitments and a soul's irrepressible integrity. Rabbi Rev. Haviva Ner-David's third memoir wrestles with awakenings and all those in the necessary ripples--parents, children, allies, strangers, spouses, friends, and self. A well-suited complement to much of religious leadership's critical theory, her words mirror the unruly challenges within and beyond a sacred calling.

Haviva guides us in peeling back the curtain of the traditions, stories and metaphors of Jewish traditional life and text to ask, what is beyond all this? To what greater purpose do we nurture our own and each other's souls? Haviva's insights emerge from her days and her dreams, and hold both mortality and infinity. Then, throughout this engrossing telling, she shows us that they are one.

This is such a moving and engaging story that gives us an example of what it means to come into one’s own truth and fully embrace it. The narrator struggles with the structures of traditional Jewish religion and finds her own way to connect more deeply to her own spiritual truth by breaking free of those structures and thereby coming closer to her own wholeness. I found this personally inspiring. I also appreciated following Haviva’s journey toward interspirituality. Gave me hope for the possibilities of true interfaith connection in our troubled world.

"While Ner-David may be an ordained rabbi, her deeply Jewish calling, like Abraham’s, is to break her parents’ idols of divisiveness. She is not our local rabbi, whom we entrust to sustain the edifice of Judaism for us and our children, but she is certainly among the experts we would call-in to add a new room to our house. She is the one who, through her Jewish journey, has found it possible to help people of all faiths find spiritual forms of expression for what their souls know to be true. In this calling may be said to lie the redemption of the world first envisioned by our prophets of old."