Join Anita Diamant and Emilia Diamant for a conversation about how they helped create new institutions and communities to respond to what they saw as unmet needs in the Jewish world: Mayyim Hayyim, Boston’s mikveh for the whole community, and Rising Voices, a writing forum for teenage Jewish women. We will begin by reading their aspirational essays, which describe what they saw was missing and what was needed, discuss how their visions became reality, and invite participants to discuss their own dreams and brainstorm about new forums and spaces for the full diversity of the Jewish community.

Anita is a writer whose work includes fiction, journalism, essays, and guidebooks to contemporary Jewish life. She is the founding president Mayyim Hayyim, Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education Center in Newton Massachusetts — a reinvention of the ancient Jewish tradition of mikveh, ritual immersion in water.

Emilia is an educator, social worker, facilitator who has taught on power and justice, whiteness, pop culture, feminism, and the arts for 15 years. She serves as Avodah’s National Program Director. Most recently, Emilia has worked with Dimensions Educational Consulting as the co-facilitator of the Jews of Color & Allies cohort, focusing on helping white women lead on racial equity and build meaningful cross-racial relationships that center Black women.