This week, I had the honor of attending the General Assembly meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. My fellowship cohort is composed of 20 Jewish leaders from different denominations and career paths. We are rabbinical students attending Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and non-denominational schools; we are Jewish professionals and Ph.D students. We reflect the great diversity and complexity of the Jewish community today. The Federation “GA,” as it’s commonly called, provided a unique backdrop to highlight the pluralistic reality of both my Wexner cohort and the North American Jewish community. As a student in HUC-JIR’s rabbinical program, I was proud to be represented by URJ President, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who was selected as the…
The week before my New York wedding, I boarded a train at Penn Station, Boston-bound, to immerse at Mayyim Hayyim. I was flustered and hurried, as brides often are in those logistics-packed pre-wedding days. The instructions in the prep rooms at the mikveh gently urged me to slow down, to reflect, and to clean under every fingernail. As I lathered my body with the soapy washcloth, I began crying big tears of release, of memory, of transition. The last time I had felt a soapy washcloth on my body was when my parents bathed me as a girl. Until that moment, I had been preoccupied mostly with place cards, flowers and seating arrangements. Standing in the shower at Mayyim Hayyim,…