Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler

Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler, MAEd., LPC (she/her/hers) serves as a psychotherapist in private practice in the Chicago area. She was ordained at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (LA, 2006), having also earned a master's degree in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2002 and subsequently a graduate degree in counseling psychology from Adler University in 2022. She draws strength from Jewish texts and tradition, existential psychology, and - often most significantly - her lived experience navigating disability, health, and healing for the last 20 years.

A red walker with a tallit draped over the handlebars and a Torah, siddur, Jewish Study bible, copy of Etz Hayim, and Rabbi's manual on the seat

Re-Membering: Reflections on Disability and Pride

Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler

June 28, 2023

July is Disability Pride Month. I’ve been living with disabilities for more than 20 years, but I’m just beginning to imagine being proud of my disability.

a white hand hovers above bubbly water, casting a reflection

Reflections of Disability: Making Visible the Invisible and Raising Up Difference

Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler

March 1, 2023

Throughout the Torah, we are instructed to move through the world with an extraordinary degree of mindfulness to the experience of others; we, too, were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt. We, as Jews, are implored by the divine to notice that which others might not observe and to advocate for one another because we know what it is to be somehow exceptional.

I Can’t Pray For Healing

Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler

February 29, 2012

This morning I received a text message from my Aunt Linda saying, “I am doing well… love being home after three weeks in the hospital and rehab.” I almost replied, as if on rabbi auto-pilot, “I’ve been praying for your recovery” but instead wrote, “I’ve been