Rabbi Miriam Geronimus
Founding Rabbi & Leader
she/her
rabbi AT clevelandjewishcollective DOT org
Rabbi Miriam (she/her) is a queer Ashkenazi Jew who grew up in an interfaith Secular Humanistic Jewish home just north 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.
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. It was here that she met her partner Itsik while learning Yiddish together in Vilna. The two of them live in Tremont with their cat and turtle.