Rabbi Miriam Geronimus

rabbi AT clevelandjewishcollective DOT org

Find a time to meet: calendly.com/rabbi-miriam

Rabbi Miriam (she/her) is a queer Ashkenazi Jew who grew up in an interfaith Secular Humanistic Jewish home in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has been interested in co-creating inclusive community where we can show up as our full vulnerable selves and wrestle with what it means to be human since she was in college, when she created LGBTQ*J, a student group for queer Jews navigating the intersection of their identities. As someone who has herself been on a long journey of rediscovery, she particularly delights in helping people explore Jewish traditions and practices in ways that feel meaningful and supportive to their lives.

Rabbi Miriam received ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in May 2021. During rabbinical school she served at several synagogues, a Jewish continuing care retirement community, Drexel University Hillel, as a hospital chaplain, and as a Hebrew school teacher. She has also received rabbinic, teacher, and entrepreneurial training from Beloved Garden, the Center for Rabbinic Innovation, and SVARA: a traditionally radical yeshiva. She continues to learn and organize as a member of Rabbis for Ceasefire, Tzedek Lab, and Beloved.

Rabbi Miriam graduated from Princeton University in 2012 with a B.A. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Ecology continues to inform how she understands the world and is an important part of her spirituality and political work. During college she also spent three summers studying Yiddish language, history, and culture at YIVO, the Yiddish Book Center, and the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, and is deeply committed to diasporic Jewish cultures and practices. It was in Vilna that she met her partner Itsik while learning Yiddish together. The two of them live in Cleveland Heights with their cat and turtle.

Teachings that ground Rabbi Miriam