The Sacred Obligations of Liberal Jews: Claiming the Word ‘Religious’
October 6, 2025
Our bonds with our loved ones represent obligation through immanence.
Maria is a student at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where she seeks to integrate her love of Torah into her work toward justice, dignity and wholeness for all people. She finds sacred connection in learning people’s stories and being present with them through times of challenge, transition and joy.
During Maria’s legal career, she worked at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia and as a public defender. Before that, she was the founding executive director of the Moscow-based Russian Justice Initiative, a human-rights litigation project. When she was 18, she co-founded the Day of Silence, a student-led day of action against the silencing and erasure of LGBTQ people in schools.
Maria is the author of Remember, Retell, Resist: Reading Difficult Biblical Passages.
Maria lives in Philadelphia with her wife and two children. She received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Virginia and her Juris Doctorate from Yale Law School.
Our bonds with our loved ones represent obligation through immanence.
By telling and re-telling difficult, even ethically repugnant, stories in the Torah, we may move from silence to healing and from narrowness to expanse.
Serving as central organization of the Reconstructionist movement
Training the next generation of groundbreaking rabbis
Modeling respectful conversations on pressing Jewish issues
Curating original, Jewish rituals, and convening Jewish creatives
