This article appeared in the Feb. 12, 2004 Jewish Advocate.

JCC explores women’s issues

By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

To get what we want, we must first accept what we have. Such is the biblical lesson of the story of Hannah, the focus of Sunday’s Women’s Conference at the Leventhal-Sidman JCC. Sponsored by the JCC, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the CJP and organized by Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center scholars Marsha Mirkin, Ph.D., and Rosie Rosenzweig, the conference featured Dr. Miriam Nelson, Director of the Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition and Associate Professor of Nutrition at Tufts University, as keynote speaker.

Nelson has authored the Strong Women series, which includes "Strong Bones, Strong Women; Strong Women Stay Young.” Her talk was accompanied by various workshops, led by experts, which included “The Mind Body Connection: Creating Meaning in Life's Passages,” "Middle Aged Moments: What's Happening to My Memory?,” “Own Your Health: Choosing the Best from Alternative and Conventional Medicine,” “Breast Cancer Update,” “Money Matters; Staying Strong While Caring for Aging Parents,” "Working Out the Kinks: Exercise and Stress,” “Feeding Boomer Bodies,” and “Yoga for the Soul.” Rosenzweig and Mirkin led “Our Bodies, Our Souls; Mind Over Menopause.”

The day focused on the impact of psychological experience upon eating and health. “How do we move from a stuck place to a more vibrant, healthy life, and what does voice have to do with this?,” asked Rosenzweig. In an interactive and experiential workshop, the Biblical story of Hannah will be studied, as participants engage in a guided meditation that supports honoring the body, letting go of unreasonable expectations, and finding inner voice.

“Hannah was unhappy about her body because it wasn't producing the results she wanted,” said Rosenzweig. “But her prayer and her spirituality opened her body through her spirit, to become receptive to G-d's gifts.” The body in its present form, she explains, should be accepted and blessed, with gratitude. “Our spiritual selves reside in our bodies and can be expressed through our bodies, but need not be imprisoned by them,” she said.

Rosenzweig, author of “A Jewish Mother in Shangri-la (Shambhala),” which chronicles coming to terms with her son's Buddhism, has published poetry, essays, and midrash in varied anthologies. She founded Mitbonennim, a Brandeis meditation society. Born in Windsor, Ontario Canada to Polish immigrant parents who escaped before World War II, she was president of BBG and a delegate to BBYO. Following the deaths of her siblings and father, she became more observant, helping to produce the first gender-friendly prayer book in the US in 1978 at Beth El in Sudbury. She wrote a column called "From the Back of the Shul," and began a Jewish poetry festival featuring Robert Pinsky, Marge Piercy, Alicia Ostriker, and other poets.

Married to a clinical psychologist, she came to Boston when her husband was employed at the New England Tufts Medical/Dental center in Boston. They have three grown children and three grandsons. Rosenzweig was ordained as a Jewish Meditation Teacher after a three year study in Berkeley with Chochmat HaLev, the only independent Jewish Meditation Center in the US. She is involved in Jewish Renewal and Jewish feminism, and leads workshops in writing, as well as guided meditations involving Biblical matriarchs.

"This special day for women was a chance to be strengthened physically, mentally and spiritually in the pursuit of living a healthy life," said Mirkin, a clinical psychologist whose newest book, “The Feminine Face of Wisdom: Gaining Insight and Strength from our Biblical Foremothers,” is due out this fall. On the faculty of the Jean Baker Miller Training Institute, Mirkin also teaches counseling at Lasell College. “At my workshops, retreats and study sessions, I discuss how stories from Torah impact our relationships today, and how Torah stories can guide us in our personal and interpersonal development,” she said. Her most recent article, on reinterpreting the Akedam, was published in the September/October edition of Tikkun Magazine.

Born to a Polish immigrant mother and second-generation father raised on the Lower East Side of New York, Wellesley resident Mirkin attended an Orthodox day school from kindergarten through 4th grade. “It was there that I developed my love for Torah and my fascination with trying to understand the layers of possible interpretations of Biblical stories,” she recalled. Her family are members of Temple Beth Elohim, where she participated in an adult B’not Mitzvah ceremony seven years ago.

Over the past 15 years, she has combined psychology with Torah. At the WSRC over four years, she has taught at Hebrew College, the Synagogue Council of Massachusetts Lunch and Learn and Kolot, JCC Torah Tastings, JCC Expressions Conference, Temple Isaiah sisterhood retreat, Temple Beth Shalom sisterhood retreat, Massachusetts School of Professional

Psychology, Lesley College, Hebrew Rehabilitation Department of Social Work,

Brookline Mental Health Center, and area synagogues and churches. “I have also been researching the work my mother did as a member of Vaad Hatzala,” she said. Her mother helped resettle Jews in Europe after the war. “She secured entry visas from Germany to other countries, brought hidden money in boxes of Barton's candy into Europe, and helped discover the identities of Jewish children in French orphanages. Her belief in social action and community responsibility as a Jewish value and obligation has been critical to my own development.”

A Women’s Conference, Sponsored by the Leventhal-Sidman JCC, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Combined Jewish Philanthropies, was held Sunday, Feb. 8, from 10 a.m.-4 p.m., at the Leventhal-Sidman JCC, 333 Nahanton St., Newton. For information, please contact Ellie Cohen at 617-558-6442.