“Ben Bag Bag would say: turn it and turn it again, for all is in it; see through it; grow old and worn in it; do not budge from it, for there is nothing that works better than it.” Pirkei Avot, 5:2
In Elul 5752, a letter went out from Deb Kram, Roni Pick, Leah Secunda and Helen Weglein inviting the Boston Jewish community to attend Ma’ayan’s inaugural event: a lecture by Founding Director Rabbi Seth Farber on the topic of Yom Kippur in Parashat Emor. This announcement garnered an enthusiastic response: over one hundred women came out for Rabbi Farber’s inspiring talk at Phyllis Hammer’s house, marking an auspicious start for Ma’ayan as an organization.
From the beginning, a primary goal of Ma’ayan was “to engage students actively in the process of learning.” For many women in the Boston area, Ma’ayan provided the opportunity to study Jewish text in ways that were previously unavailable to them.
Thirty years later, Ma’ayan’s students have numbered in the thousands, among them children and grandchildren of the organization’s founders. Technological advances have allowed Ma’ayan to expand beyond the Boston area, bringing teachers and students from around the world together in a shared virtual classroom. Yet Ma’ayan’s mandate remains the same, to create opportunities for our community members to engage authentically and profoundly with Jewish texts. To paraphrase Pirkei Avot, nothing works better for connecting with Jewish tradition and practice than turning these texts again and again.