HOME > WRITING > JEWISH COMMUNITY LIFE

INSPIRE
Growing up I took for granted the communal institutions where I spent much of time; never thinking much about how they were organized, financed and run.
All that changed I moved to Cambridge, MA in 2001, and could not find a synagogue where I felt comfortable. To fill the void, I came together with a few friends to co-found Minyan Tehillah, a lay-led, vibrant independent minyan (prayer community). During the next ten years I served in various leadership positions, and the minyan became an anchor of my social and spiritual life.
I am committed to Jewish community education – both as a teacher, and in organizing and administering programs. And I have worked in a professional capacity for the Jewish organized world, at the Joint Distribution Committee and for the Jewish Federation.
Please see my essays below related to these various endeavors.
Growing up I took for granted the communal institutions where I spent much of time; never thinking much about how they were organized, financed and run.
All that changed I moved to Cambridge, MA in 2001, and could not find a synagogue where I felt comfortable. To fill the void, I came together with a few friends to co-found Minyan Tehillah, a lay-led, vibrant independent minyan (prayer community). During the next ten years I served in various leadership positions, and the minyan became an anchor of my social and spiritual life.
I am committed to Jewish community education – both as a teacher, and in organizing and administering programs. And I have worked in a professional capacity for the Jewish organized world, at the Joint Distribution Committee and for the Jewish Federation.
Please see my essays below related to these various endeavors.
American Jewish Community Life
Minyan Tehillah, an independent partnership minyan
Jewish Identity and Belonging
- When Does Jewish Education End?
- We are All Connected
- Caring for Your Family, Caring for the World
Minyan Tehillah, an independent partnership minyan
- Have a look at my essay, In the Synagogue: Navigating between Halakhah and Women’s Participation, published by the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
- I am featured in this very interesting article about Minyan Tehillah, A Radical Position: Orthodox Judaism Meets Feminism, published in the Boston Globe not long after the minyan was created.
- Here is a talk I delivered on Yom Kippur about the Hineini Prayer (2012/5753)
- On the occasion of Minyan Tehillah's welcoming of our new Torah I delivered this talk (Nov 2010).
Jewish Identity and Belonging
- Here is an essay I had published in The Jewish Daily Forward about the ways in which my travels helped me to find my roots.