Rain, Dew, and the Nourishment We Need

For obvious reasons, I’ve been thinking a lot about the weather over these last couple of weeks. Perhaps it started when I spent an hour and a half shoveling snow to get our car dislodged, finally understanding the Philly practice of sticking a lawn chair in a street parking spot to claim “savesies.” Perhaps it […]

Expressing the Inexpressible

This Shabbat is known as Shabbat Shirah, the Shabbat of Song. That is because, in celebration of becoming Bat Mitzvah, Yaeli Zhang will lead us in the chanting of a very special song, Shirat Hayam, the Song of the Sea. We’ve already gotten a taste of it tonight, and in fact we do at every […]

Karen Hafter

Karen (she/her) is a third-generation member of Society Hill Synagogue and a proud graduate of our Ann Spak Thal Hebrew School. She has dedicated her professional life to education. After graduating summa cum laude and being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa at Skidmore College in 2019, Karen moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to teach middle school English […]

Rosalie Swana

Rosalie (she/her) grew up in Kensington in a family of artists and educators and has been immersed in creativity from an early age. After graduating from the Science Leadership Academy, she taught in music programs across Philadelphia before devoting herself to Jewish education. Her work in Chabad schools led her to study Hasidic music and to teach […]