Meet Chandra and Michael Rudd
Posted on 09/18/2026 @ 06:30 AM
Come for the Ideas, Stay for the Community: Meet Chandra and Michael Rudd
By Rachel Benaim Abudarham, Assistant Director of Adult Learning
The couple whose gift established the Chandra and Michael Rudd Center for Adult Learning at CAJE sat down with Department Director Dr. Bella Tendler Krieger and Assistant Director Rachel Benaim Abudarham to talk about how they found their way to Jewish Miami, and why they believe the future of Jewish life runs through the written word.
Some people arrive at Jewish community through synagogue. Chandra and Michael Rudd arrived through ideas.
Michael grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, in a tight knit, diverse, liberal Jewish community. Chandra grew up in Northern California and fell in love with Michael and Judaism in her adult years.
They met in a San Francisco elevator sixteen years ago, moved to Miami, and have spent the years since asking a deceptively simple yet integral question: what actually holds Jews together?
Their answer, and their gift endowing the Chandra and Michael Rudd Center for Adult Learning at CAJE, is a wager on Jewish learning itself. What follows is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Let's start at the beginning. How did the two of you meet?
Chandra: In an elevator. I walked in, I was in a hurry, and this man immediately asked me my name. Then he confirmed the floor I'd pressed, asked my apartment number, and asked if I was single… in that order. I hadn't even been paying attention to him, and suddenly I thought, who asks that? Ten minutes later he knocked on my door.
Michael: I started to write down her apartment number, figured I'd lose it, so I just walked up and knocked. I tried to talk her out of wherever she was going that night. We went out the next night.
Chandra: That was really about it. I thought here's a man who actually follows through. And here we are.
Michael, tell us about your Jewish upbringing.
Michael: Louisville had a lively little Jewish community, filled with creative people who all knew each other. But I didn't realize there'd been a division between white Jews and white non-Jews around me until I went back and thought, oh, that's why I never got invited to the debutante parties. I went to a Catholic high school, because that's where the good education was. And, strangely, that's where I learned the most about being Jewish! Being bounced up against something else forced me to understand my own tradition better than I ever had.
Why did you decide to support Adult Education at CAJE now?
Michael: This is such a critical time, and that's exactly why adult education matters. Look at how people take in information now. Someone told me, as fact, that the Iranians had killed 32,000 people... I did a complete search of the internet, and the only place it appeared was a political speech. People read things online and don't know how to figure out whether they're even true, because there's just so much garbage. Adults need a place to slow down and think, and to have the hard conversations that communities tend to avoid. That's what I want to support.
Chandra: If you ask what actually unites Jews, I'd say it's text. There's a fracturing along ideological lines, more complicated here than elsewhere because Israel is in the mix — and the way back is to return to what we share: the written word. It's like the Cairo Geniza: there was such profound reverence for even the written word that they wouldn't even throw it away. That reverence is the anchor of the whole identity, and it distinguishes Jews. There's this dialogue about core human issues and how to live, told and retold through these stories. That, ultimately, is what a place like CAJE is for. It's the linchpin.
What's inspired you about CAJE's work?
Chandra: The way Jews create community for one another... I find it remarkable. In this world everyone wants community, and this is a really good one. When Michael and I first moved to Miami almost fifteen years ago, I was struck by how central belonging is to Jewish life here. What draws me now is something warmer and more personal: sitting together, actually talking, really knowing one another [at the salons]. I want to help build it.
How would you like to see CAJE grow?
Chandra: I'd love to see CAJE do the things it isn't doing yet...I have a long list. Much of it is examining what "Jewishness" really means across every part of our education.
Michael: I'd add: rigor. Where there's real support flowing to Jewish education, there should be real standards attached to it. And I'd love to see Jewish learning open its doors wider: I learned the most about my own tradition standing next to people who weren't part of it.
Chandra: And how we teach matters as much as what we teach. I'm a die-hard Montessori person — I honestly don't know why anyone does anything else. That instinct doesn't stop at childhood; it's how I think about learning at every age. The ‘how’ that initially inspired me to support CAJE’s adult learning is the salon’s and if you haven’t found a CAJE salon to attend, register immediately! The salons are a format that meets the educational needs right now more than anything.
Lightning round. Favorite Jewish holiday?
Chandra: Rosh Hashana. Or Passover!
Michael: Yom Kippur.
Favorite Jewish teaching?
Chandra: On our second date, Michael took me to a Jewish learning class ahead of his daughter’s bat mitzvah about the mitzvah of not speaking about others (lashon hara). It fascinated me, honestly, because most moral systems don’t bring this so deeply into the moral equation to ask what the effect is of speaking good or bad. It was the first Jewish teaching to really stick for me, and it’s not totally resolved. I still haven't come to terms with it, but it’s beautiful.
Michael: One of my favorite things is that, going back to Yom Kippur, when you're asking forgiveness from God, if you sin against another person, you aren't forgiven until they forgive you. That's one of my favorites.
Brisket or gefilte fish?
Chandra: Brisket, obviously.
Michael: I always liked gefilte fish, but if I had to have dinner for 10 nights in a row, I would pick brisket, obviously.
Bagels with cream cheese or lox?
Chandra: I didn’t even know you could separate them!
