Read this terrific article in Hey Alma by Religious School teacher Sophia Garcia Maier about her Sephardic heritage, and how her experience on our Lifelong Learning faculty has been a meaningful part of her Jewish Journey.
“I am a New York Jew, the Jewish daughter of two unabashed New Yorkers, and I grew up in a Jewish and Catholic suburb in Orange County, New York, where I got my holidays off and was part of a middle school “Jew Crew.” I stayed in New York for college, moving to the Bronx and devoting my academic time to studying New York’s Jewish history. I also taught at Temple Emanu-El, the city’s shining jewel of a synagogue. In college, I remained immersed in the Jewish community which had taken me in as a student and an educator, and kept me grounded when other aspects of my life became unmoored. Living on my own in my Bronx apartment, I felt more connected to my religion than ever. As I lit my menorah in the winter, I thought about the one, two, even three generations of Jews before me who would have, just blocks away from where I lived, been muttering the same words, feeling the same light. I felt, to paraphrase the great Paul Rudd, that I was not only practicing Judaism — I had perfected it.”
Click here to read the full article on Hey Alma
