by Rabbi Jamie Kotler As the month of Elul approaches, immediately preceding the High Holy Days, I am filled with trepidation. The rabbis understand it to be a joyous time. They traditionally interpret the Hebrew letters of Elul (אלול) as an acronym for Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li – “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved […]
Continue Readingby Fern Remedi-Brown This is our family’s story: Before we adopted our now-12-year-old daughter, Maya, from Guatemala, we had decided on her name. Her biological mother had given her the name María Guadalupe, which means “river of black stones.” We are a two-mom, bi-cultural family. I was raised Jewish, and my wife, Ginny, was a […]
Continue Readingby Leah Robbins, Administrative and Marketing Assistant I don’t know about you, but Elul has me totally out of sorts. This is supposed to be a deeply reflective moment in time, a month to really sit with our struggles, reevaluate our behavior, renegotiate our values, and renew our commitments. There’s so much I’m itching to […]
Continue Readingby Elisha Gechter Last week my husband Sam and I endured a connecting flight from Boston to Knoxville, TN with our 5 year-old and 9 month-old. We were eclipse-bound and willing to make some sacrifices in the name of science. Aside from all the planning that went into the week we would spend in Great […]
Continue Readingby Amber Caulkins, Director of Rising Tide “I love the mikveh. The water is so warm.” These were the words of my five year-old daughter, Rebecca, as she sat at the breakfast table, a half-eaten bowl of cereal in front of her, looking at a picture she had drawn the day before. The picture, drawn […]
Continue Readingby 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 […]
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