Returning Home as Rabbi-in-Residence
"What excites me about the community is what I have witnessed from the outside, which is a growth in self-understanding of mission, purpose, and relationship to the neighborhood."
— Rabbi Mira Rivera
February 16, 2023
Rabbi Mira Rivera first joined the JCC community nearly 25 years ago as a music specialist, running the Mira’s Music for Babies class for new moms, their babies, and caregivers. Fifteen years later, she became the rabbinical intern for The David H. Sonabend Center for Israel, while in her last year of study at The Jewish Theological Center (JTS). And starting this month, Rabbi Mira joins JCC Harlem as the inaugural Rabbi-in-Residence.
Through her six month residency at JCC Harlem, she will develop monthly Shabbat services for adults and families, driven by music and participatory rituals and open to anyone seeking spiritual refuge. She is also dedicated to generating leadership opportunities for Jews of Color and allies, and building an inclusive, joyful Jewish life representing the vibrancy and complexity of Harlem.
Rabbi Mira’s newly created, monthly Shabbat services will happen every first Friday and Saturday, through July. Family-centered Saturday morning Shabbat programs welcome participants of all ages, focusing on Shabbat prayers, movement, art, and singing; while Friday evening adult Shabbat programs create opportunities for Jews of Color to learn and hold rituals. Shabbat programs are pay what you wish, and open to the public.
In organizing Shabbat celebrations, Rabbi Mira aims to engage with the community regarding prayers, reflections, Torah readings, celebrations to mark yahrzeits and headline prayers. She also looks forward to teaching the community to “learn how to lead certain parts of the service, to polish your Torah reading skills, or if you want to begin chanting and reading from the Torah scroll during the year and looking forward toward High Holidays.”
Her hope is “to invite those of us in Harlem who identify as Jews of Color, our BIPOC adjacent communities, our allies, supporters, and families. The invitation is not only for participation as ‘Jews in the Pews’ but for us to shape Shabbat as celebration, lifting up the aspirations of those of us who have been previously-invited-but-largely-unheard.”
Rabbi Mira Rivera is the first Filipina-American rabbi to receive ordination from JTS. Her career has been focused within the Jews of Color community, as well as the Harlem community, having received the Rabbinical Excellence Award from Harlem’s District 9 for her work in building a sukkah on the grounds of St. Mary's Episcopal Church, the “Be not Afraid Church” in West Harlem.
She recalls the first time she attended an event at JCC Harlem in 2017, shortly after it opened, for a Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend salon: Action in a Time of Injustice with Yavilah McCoy. “Much had been anticipated about the JCC coming into Harlem, so I wanted to experience it for myself alongside Dr. Renee Hill, a noted scholar and professor based in Harlem. We had been studying together in West Harlem and were curious. My breath was suspended during the event because an Orthodox Jewish African American woman was leading a discussion on Martin Luther King weekend inside a Jewish institution. After the discussion I remember going into a huddle with Yavilah McCoy, Dr. Hill, and two other women with whom I have collaborated in Jews of Color events around New York City, and we shared our dreams, beginning with seeing more of us in Jewish institutional spaces.”
Since then, Rabbi Mira has been invited to attend events both Jewish and community oriented: "There were Martin Luther King celebrations, Sukkot in Harlem alongside the NYC Commission on Human Rights, a musical concert with three Jewish queer artists, and the culmination of the first cohort of the New York Hub Jews of Color Initiative Leadership Fellowship, which struck me to my core because there we were at JCC Harlem, providing space and celebrating a year-long fellowship by young adult Jews of Color who had worked together to gain firsthand experience in the Jewish nonprofit sector." She also worked alongside former JCC Harlem Director Meg Sullivan and other JCC Harlem community organizers to re-imagine and dream up places for Jewish communities to "thrive, and not merely survive."
Rabbi Mira is looking forward to her six month Rabbi-in-Residence position with the beloved community of JCC Harlem. "What excites me about the community is what I have witnessed from the outside, which is a growth in self-understanding of mission, purpose, and relationship to the neighborhood."
JCC Harlem Shabbat programs begin this weekend, February 17 and 18. March Shabbat programs will take place on March 3 and 4. To register, visit jccharlem.org/register. To stay up to date on JCC Harlem programs, sign up for the email list.
JCC Harlem is a community space on West 118th Street that is welcome to all. An initiative of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan in collaboration with UJA-Federation of NY, JCC Harlem creates unique and diverse access points to Jewish and communal life for members of the Harlem community. JCC Harlem is an institution that is at once intentionally Jewish and committed to facilitating experiences between those who identify Jewishly and those who identify otherwise—in service of connecting, growing, and learning within an ever-changing Jewish landscape.
Written by Lauren Magy. Lauren is the Director of Public Relations + Community Engagement at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan. She has worked at theater and cultural institutions in DC and NY for the past decade.