Rabbi Michal Woll will deliver the annual Rabbi Victor E. Reichert Bible Talk at the Ripton Community Church at 3:30 pm on Sunday, October 11th.  

Rabbi Michal Woll was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2007 and began her rabbinic career as the first rabbi at Shir Shalom in Woodstock ,VT. After serving as visiting rabbi at Beth Jacob in Montpelier, Woll moved to the Midwest, returning to VT in 2025 after eight years at a congregations in Ann Arbor, MI, Milwaukee, WI, and serving as a hospice chaplain.  She lives in Middlebury with her husband Jon Sweeney, their daughters Sima and Ana, and some sweet furry critters who shed too much. She serves as Rabbi at the Rutland Jewish Center.

Prior to becoming a rabbi, Michal had a technical career in medical product development and marketing, and she has had a parallel clinical career as a home-care physical therapist for many years. She retains her interest in health, medicine, hospice and end of life care. She is affiliated nationally with T'ruah - Rabbis for Human Rights. Locally, Rabbi Woll is on the board of the Charter House Coalition and works as a guardian ad litem in the Addison County family court. 

 Rabbi Woll his given the title “How to Emerge Unscathed” to her talk.    

The annual Reichert Bible Talk is a tradition that reaches back to the years just after World War II, when poet Robert Frost invited Rabbi Reichert to visit him at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference in Ripton. Frost had met Reichert while giving a reading in Cincinnati, where Reichert was rabbi of the Rockdale Temple, the oldest synagogue west of the Alleghenies, from 1924 to 1964. Their friendship deepened, and Rabbi Reichert and his wife Louise eventually bought an old one-room schoolhouse near Bread Loaf as a summer cottage. 

For many summers, the Reicherts attended the nearby Ripton United Methodist Church, and Rabbi Reichert was invited to give a talk in the late summer on one of the books of the Hebrew bible, of those scriptures common to Jews and Christians. The “Bible Talk” became an annual event, and the Ripton congregation named Reichert the church’s “Rabbi in Residence.”

Since Rabbi Reichert’s passing in 1990 at the age of ninety-three, Havurah—The Jewish Community of Addison County---and the United Methodist Churches of Middlebury, East Middlebury and Ripton have collaborated to sustain this interfaith tradition by co-sponsoring the Bible Talk every year.

The Ripton Community Church is located on Route 125 in the village center.  Call 802-388-0338 for further information.