Anita Diamant is the author of 13 books: five novels, including the New York Times bestseller, The Red Tent.

She has written six non-fiction guides to contemporary Jewish life, including The Jewish Wedding Now, Living a Jewish Life, and Saying Kaddish.

Anita is the founding president of Mayyim Hayyim Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center: a 21st century reinvention of the ancient tradition of immersion for all Jews and those becoming Jewish.

Description

Our volunteers are precious to the work of the Hevra Kadisha and mikveh movements. Come see how the Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston and Mayyim Hayyim have integrated ways of caring for our amazing volunteers that you can implement yourself as a volunteer. There will be an opportunity for a bit of embodied practice within the workshop, as well.

Educators

Bev Klau
Director of Programs and Partnerships at Mayyim Hayyim

Bev is an educator, facilitator, and connector who has been facilitating the Beneath the Surface program at Mayyim Hayyim for over a dozen years. She has been a classroom teacher in Jewish day schools, a religious school principal, and part of the URJ Eisner Camp staff. She’s also an entrepreneur and a community activist who has launched multiple programs to build community in her town. Bev holds a master’s degree from Bank Street in Museum Education. Bev met her husband Max at Pardes in Jerusalem. She loves to cook vegetarian food and support her two teenage children through their performances in community theater productions. Bev lives in Natick with her family and two cats.

Barbara Neustadt
Barbara has been a member of the Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston since its beginning in 2013.  She served as the Volunteer Liaison for several years, supporting volunteers and leading support groups.  Barbara has been the President of the Community Hevra Kadisha Board since 2018.  She was part of the group that developed and designed Toward a Gender Inclusive Hevra.

Educators

Rabbi Elie Lehmann
Bio coming soon

Description

This session will explore gender inclusivity as a Jewish value and how to put that value into action in the specific context of mikveh and tahara. We will share examples from the Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston and Mayyim Hayyim to learn concrete tools for moving towards a future of Jewish embodied practices that meets the needs of every Jew. A specific emphasis will be placed on the whys and hows of making a Hevra Kadisha and mikveh accessible to transgender, gender expansive, and genderqueer individuals.

Educators

Soreh Ruffman
(she/her/s) Director of Rising Tide, Mayyim Hayyim

Soreh comes to Mayyim Hayyim with over 10 years of experience as an educator and community organizer, with a background in sustainable Jewish farming, trauma and disability informed special education, and transformative justice. Mikveh has been instrumental in marking several critical life transitions in Soreh’s life. She sees inextricable connection between tahara and mikveh and has been a volunteer at the Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston and in her current community in Bloomington, IN.

Eli Sobel
(they/he) Greater Boston Education & Training Manager

Eli [they/he] brings their love of words and storytelling to their work as an educator to people of all ages. He has taught at numerous institutions on the intersection of LGBTQ+ identity and culture with Jewish identity and practice. Eli lives outside Boston and enjoys serving as the Education & Training Team’s regional representative in greater New England.

Rivka Nechemya Thrope
(any/all) volunteer with the Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston and Rabbinical School Student at Hebrew College

Rivka Nechemya Thrope (any/all) is a second-year rabbinical student at Hebrew College and joined the Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston at the start of 2024. Prior to starting rabbinical school, he received a BA in Comparative Religion at Harvard College, where his final paper was on the topics of gender and tahara. Rivka Nechemya enjoys dancing, cooking, hiking, knitting, and spending time with Chickpea the calico cat.

Educators

Becca Heisler
(she/her/s) Rabbinic Intern, Mayyim Hayyim

Becca is an outdoor educator, ritualist, folk herbalist, and rabbinical student who loves to be outside, and loves to laugh. Originally from the Chicago area, she spent six years making home in Lisjan Ohlone territory (Berkeley/Oakland, CA) where she served the community by facilitating Jewish outdoor education programs and guiding earth-based rites of passage for youth K-12 and adults of all ages. In 2022, she relocated to Cambridge, to start rabbinical school at Hebrew College. She is a devoted student of the waters, learning transformation, renewal, and interconnectedness. Becca has been leading individuals and groups in mikveh in wild places for many years, and believes deeply in the power of immersion. She is humbly excited to continue learning at Mayyim Hayyim this year!

Linda Goodspeed
Co-Founder of North Shore Chevra Kadisha

Linda began her Hevra Kadisha journey before covid, when a need for a new Hevra on the north shore was presented to community. She cofounded the Community Hevra Kadisha North Shore Boston in 2023 and was fully operational mid 2024 working out of the Goldman Funeral Chapel in Malden. 

Since early retirement from high tech startups (Vistaprint, DraftKings, Akili) Linda found a passion in encouraging families to discuss and preplan their passing and promoting the incredibly beautiful and spiritually moving ritual of performing tahara. 

In addition to her work with the Hevra, Linda is also on the board of the USA branch of Madrasafree.com, an Israeli nonprofit which has taught 200k Israelis how to speak everyday Arabic which is improving communications in the region. 

Linda lives in Beverly with her husband Andy has two children in their 20’s and a puppy named Aiko.

Moderator

Stephanie Levin
Executive Director of the Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston

Panelists

Sivan Piatagorsky-Roth
Mikveh Guide and Chevra member

Sivan is a rabbinical student and a cartoonist. They are passionate about inclusive and accessible ritual and community resources/education surrounding life cycle events. They have worked in spiritual caregiving, ritual education, Jewish text study education, early childhood education, and as an illustrator and comic artist.

Marcy Lidman
Mikveh Guide and Chevra member

Lidman is an active member of Temple Emunah in Lexington, Massachusetts.  Lidman is a past congregational president and continues to serve in many capacities including Haftarah coordinator, Darshan mentor for B’mitzvah students, and Sunday night Minyan leader.

Lidman is mostly retired from a wonderful career in organizational and leadership development in a non-profit healthcare system. Lidman now focuses on volunteer work within her shul as well as at Mayyim Hayyim Open Mikveh and Educational Center, our local community Hevra Kadisha. Lidman is honored and humbled to serve in those two communities. Other volunteer work includes facilitating conversation groups for new English speakers and supporting food insecurity in our area. Lidman keeps trying to improve at Pickleball without much success, playing weekly in the Sunday morning Kosher Dills league.

Kevin Tsukroff
Chevra member

Kevin is a 58 year old father of two. He grew up with a Protestant Mother and Jewish Father. He had experience with a Beit movement synagogue as a young boy. In his 40s, he was finally ready to officially convert to Judiasm. His temple, B’nai Abraham, in Beverly MA is a wonderful place where he feels like a real part of the community. Outside the Temple, Kevin occasionally will join a very amateur Theater Group, help with Cares Days, and join in community activities with his Daughter.  In the Temple, he is on the Ritual Committee, he will be found helping with tables and chairs for events, helping with the Purim adult after-party, and joining in other events such as walks to raise money for worthy causes.

He decided to join the Chevra Kadisha because he feels this mitzvah is an honor to those that need it. He believes in the saying “If I don’t, who will”?

Educator

Aki Yonekawa
(she/her) is a Jewish educator and lover of adventures, Jewish camp, nature, and French fries. She has worked in a variety of educational settings including schools (early childhood through high school,) camps, museums, and synagogues. She is a freelance educator, managing special programs, tutoring bmitzvah students, and working with young adults in leadership programs. She spends her summers as a faculty member at Brandeis Camp Institute, an immersive summer program for Jews in their 20s in Southern California. She lives in an attic in Cambridge, a long way from Los Angeles where she grew up.