News

Anna Zeisel, MDiv'26 receives the Buechner Writing Prize at the 2026 hooding and pinning ceremony

Anna Zeisel came to the University of Chicago Divinity School by a route she hadn't planned. Drawn to work as a death doula, accompanying people through the final chapter of their lives, she learned that chaplaincy training was open to her as a non-Christian student. She was enrolled at a seminary when she discovered the Divinity School, and since she was already living in Chicago, the decision was easy.

"I heard that the University of Chicago has a nice divinity school," she recalled, "and that's how I ended up here."

She completed her first hospital chaplaincy internship while earning her master's and came away certain of her direction. Her thesis, "On Longing, Absence, and the Uses of Traditional Prayer in Contemporary Jewish Life," is now finished, and next year she will be a clinical pastoral education resident at Rush University Medical Center, working toward board certification.

The School also changed how she understands herself. Among classmates from a wide range of traditions, many of them actively renegotiating their beliefs, Zeisel found herself identifying more deeply with her own Jewish background.

"I feel so lucky to look around and know that I'm going to know the future of religious leadership in this country," she said. "I trust them, and I think they're amazing people."

Read more about the Class of 2026 and their journeys to Convocation in the full University of Chicago News story.