In 2000 Barenblat co-founded Inkberry, along with books about Wisconsin, Michigan, Washington and Texas. From 2009 to 2011, she served on the board of directors of the
Organization for Transformative Works. Beginning in 2014 she served on the board of directors of
ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, which she co-chaired from 2015 to 2017. In 2018 she co-founded Bayit: Building Jewish.
70 faces received critical praise: :"These poems are so out there, so radical, and at the same time so gentle and inviting. Barenblat manages to do work that has passion and truth behind it, without ranting. I love the simple and confident way she deals with the akedah -- and I love the final poem in this collection -- gliding right past heartbreak into renewal, which is what her poems all seem to do." --
Alicia Ostriker : "Rachel Barenblat's Torah poems open the doorway into sacred text so that we can walk in and make it our home. She invites us to bring all of our passion, doubt, humor, humility and chutzpah as we encounter these ancient words and bring them to Life. Through Rachel's skillful, joyful, playful and profound poetry, the Torah opens her secrets to us and invites us into an intimate conversation with Truth." -- Rabbi
Shefa Gold and has received generally positive reviews: :"[The poems in 70 Faces] take time to think about daily things -- a bottle of milk, talismans on a desk -- and ongoing things -- the names of animals, the urge to make -- and lifelong things -- a baby born in danger, a difficult reunion at a funeral. // They chronicle the round of the year and the quiet, continual effort to walk forward, to think about work and family and the light on the ridge lines." :"Reb Rachel engages head-on with a question that nags — what is the downside to this whole taking over Canaan business? There is nothing heavy-handed or polemical here. She could be talking about the ancient Israelites, the modern Israelites, or any of us caught in the situation of getting the better of someone else. In my humble, really good poetry tackles big questions in such a way as to leave the reader with more questions, shaking our collective heads heads in wonder. The good stuff – and here I'm quoting another poem from the book - builds a structure to house what you long for." although the
Forward reviewer argued that the book's fatal flaw is "its failure to live up to the claims the author makes for it." Her second book of poetry,
Waiting to Unfold, was also published by Phoenicia (2013): :Poet and rabbi Rachel Barenblat wrote one poem during each week of her son's first year of life, chronicling the wonder and the delight along with the pain of learning to nurse, the exhaustion of sleep deprivation, and the dark descent into -- and eventual ascent out of -- postpartum depression. :This book is two cycles, one of pregnancy, and one of the first year after her child's birth. The poems have that same "Oh! I'd forgotten about how beautiful/hard/sad/quiet/fierce that was" quality that all true stories about the first year of parenthood do, and made me laugh and tear up a little and feel nostalgic and sad for new mothers everywhere. Barenblat is also author of several poetry
chapbooks, among them
the skies here (
Pecan Grove Press, 1995),
What Stays (Bennington Writing Seminars Alumni Chapbook Series, 2002),
chaplainbook (Laupe House Press, 2006), she was ordained a rabbi in early 2011. She started a blog,
Velveteen Rabbi, in 2003, and in the spring of 2008, it was named one of the top 25 blogs in Time.com's First Annual Blog Index. She has guest-blogged at Jewess, Kesher Talk, Sojourner, and the Best American Poetry Blog, and she spent a year writing weekly
Torah commentaries for
Radical Torah. Her poetry appears in
The Heart of All That Is: Reflections on Home (
Holy Cow! Press, 2013),
Before There Is Nowhere to Stand (Lost Horse Press, 2012), and
The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (Bloomsbury, 2013), among others. With
Thurman Hart, Barenblat co-founded the first Progressive Faith Blog Con, a gathering for bloggers of progressive faith which took place in
Montclair, New Jersey in 2006. Her ''Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for
Pesach'', a free and open-source
haggadah which combines traditional texts with poetry and creative interpretations, is used worldwide. ==Personal life==