Rabbi Francine Roston

Rabbi Francine Roston is the founder of Glacier Jewish Community / B’nai Shalom which serves the Jewish community of the Flathead Valley in northwest Montana. She is co-founder of a local Interfaith Clergy group, and a regular volunteer for the Glacier National Park Citizen Science Program and Land to Hand Montana. Rabbi Francine is also a board member of the mindfulness-based, online Jewish community Path With Heart and teaches mindfulness meditation locally and online. Before moving to Montana, Rabbi Francine served as a congregational rabbi for Conservative congregations in New Jersey for sixteen years. When Rabbi Francine was hired by Congregation Beth El in South Orange, NJ, she broke the “stained glass ceiling” as the first Conservative woman rabbi to serve a congregation larger than 500 households. She received ordination in 1998 from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and a BA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. After the Roston family traveled to Montana a few years in a row, they fell in love with the lifestyle and natural surroundings of the area. Rabbi Francine and her family moved to Montana in 2014. Soon after, in the winter of 2016-17, her family and community experienced neo-nazi cyberterrorist attacks and harassment. The lessons Rabbi Francine learned from this experience directed her to focus her studies and teaching in the areas of trauma, healing, resiliency, and mindfulness. Rabbi Francine is a trained teacher of the Community Resiliency Model helping individuals develop resiliency skills and guiding communities to be trauma-sensitive and resiliency-focused. She is also a certified Teacher of Mindfulness Meditation under the direction of renowned teachers Tara Brach & Jack Kornfield.