Rabbi Donna Berman was awarded the 2012 Elizabeth L. Mahaffey Arts Administration Fellowship for her professional accomplishments as an arts administrator.

Rabbi Donna Berman has served as the Executive Director of the Charter Oak Cultural Center since 2001. She holds a Ph.D. in Religion and Social Ethics from Drew University. In her dissertation entitled, Nashiut Ethics: The Articulation of a Jewish Feminist Ethics of Safe-Keeping, Rabbi Berman developed a method for doing Jewish feminist ethics. At the core of her theology is a commitment to the Jewish tradition of tikkun olam, repairing the world through acts of justice. This is a commitment that she brings to her work at Charter Oak.

Rabbi Berman is rabbi emerita of Port Jewish Center in Port Washington, New York, where she served as spiritual leader and principal of the Hebrew school for 12 years. She is the founder and co-chair of The South Bronx—Port Washington Community Partnership, a mutually beneficial collaboration between one of the poorest communities in the nation and one of the wealthiest. She has taught at Molloy College in New York, Wesleyan University and Hartford Seminary, where she teaches presently.
She has served as the Jewish chaplain at Mount Holyoke College in Hadley, Massachusetts. Rabbi Berman is the co-editor of a special edition of The Journal of Reform Judaism and is the author of numerous articles. She co-edited and wrote the foreword for, The Coming of Lilith: Essays on Feminism, Judaism, and Sexual Ethics, 1973-2003 by Judith Plaskow. Rabbi Berman is the co-author, with Barbara Bennett, of Fork in the Road: A Companion for Women Who Are Going Back to School Later in Life (and Those Who Want To). In 2006, Rabbi Berman received Leadership Greater Hartford’s Polaris Award in arts and culture and in the spring of 2007 she was honored by American Friends Service Committee for her work in social justice. In 2009, she was given the Dance Pioneer Award by Trinity College and in the spring of 2010, she received the Human Relations Award from the National Conference for Community and Justice. In June 2010, Rabbi Berman graduated from Hartford Family Institute’s training program in body-centered Gestalt therapy and was recently named one of Greater Hartford’s 12 most influential people by Hartford Magazine along with individuals such as Governor Dannel Malloy, Mayor Pedro Segarra and Jim Calhoun.