by Rachel Tali Kaplan An invitation and an ode: a rabbinical student’s thoughts on and encouragement to join Mayyim Hayyim for Knocking at Our Hearts, a High Holiday musical workshop with Joey Weisenberg, on September 10 at 3:30PM. water and music are healing to immerse and be immersed surrounded enveloped both mediums allow me to […]
Continue Readingby Rachel Eisen, Director of Annual Giving Jewish rituals and religious observance rely on community, and people are the backbone of communities. That’s what I walked away with after seeing the film, The Women’s Balcony. The film is about people from a small Sephardi congregation in Jerusalem, whose lives are disrupted when the upstairs women’s […]
Continue Readingby Kim Creem This past May was my daughter Lily’s Bat Mitzvah at Temple Emanuel in Newton, where we have been members for over 15 years. She had been at Temple Emanuel for both preschool and Hebrew school and was completing her last year at Makor at Hebrew College in the spring. Over the years, […]
Continue ReadingPosted with permission from Skip Palter, after a visit to Mayyim Hayyim to mark the completion of a mourning period for his wife, Ann. Hi Carrie, I am writing to share with you that I believe I experienced a miracle on June 14, 2017. And I have been meaning to write to you or someone […]
Continue ReadingReposted with permission from Fresh Ideas from HBI: The Hadassah Brandeis Institute Blog by Elana Luban When I first heard about the annual Gilda Slifka summer intern’s trip to Mayyim Hayyim, I wasn’t quite sure what could be groundbreaking or ideologically feminist about a mikveh. My first two mikveh trips shaped my life and my […]
Continue Readingby Lisa Berman, Mikveh and Education Director December 16, 1990, our wedding day, was the culmination of some very speedy planning. My then-boyfriend Jeff and I, living 200 miles apart for two years, waited until we knew we could both be employed in the same city to get engaged. We managed the trifecta of life […]
Continue Readingby Rabbi Leora Abelson Ordination weekend began at the mikveh. This felt right for our class, which had marked the beginning of each year of rabbinical school with a ritual at Crystal Lake. We know that the mere presence of water can be grounding and heart-opening. We gathered early Friday morning. Our group of eleven […]
Continue Readingby Leeza Negelev, Associate Director of Education I first joined Mayyim Hayyim’s program for Bat Mitzvah girls and their mothers, Beneath the Surface, as an educator for the 11th cohort in 2014. I had heard a lot about the impact of the program: how beloved it is by the moms and daughters who participate, as […]
Continue Readingby Phyllis Hirth Here’s my timeline, short and sweet: I was born in Connecticut, raised as a Catholic, moved to New York after college, met my husband, and married into a Conservative Jewish family. My first experience with mikveh was during my own conversion to Judaism. My memory of that is less than pleasant. A woman […]
Continue Readingby Leah Robbins, Administrative and Marketing Assistant A few months ago, I attended a women’s Rosh Chodesh (new moon) gathering at the Moishe Kavod House. After discussing the themes of the month and checking in with one another about our many life transitions, we were asked to take a siddur (prayer book) and borrow lines […]
Continue Readingby Leah Bieler All four of my kids inherited things from me: some good, and some bad. And since I tend to be a bit strong-willed – some might even say stubborn – it’s no surprise that trait got passed down to all four of them…must be a dominant gene. But my younger daughter, Nili […]
Continue Readingby Carrie Bornstein, Executive Director When Mayyim Hayyim was born in 2001, the world was a very different place. The internet certainly was, too. Most Americans, in fact, didn’t even have internet access and if they did, they connected via dial-up. (Go ahead and click here to relive the memories.) Mayyim Hayyim launched its very […]
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