Miriam Eisenstein

Miriam R. Eisenstein, 83, is the elder daughter of Rabbi Ira and Judith (Kaplan) Eisenstein. As an attorney, she served from 1969 to 1999 in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She also holds degrees in secondary education and special education, and she taught for a number of years before and after her legal career. Miriam (aka “Mim”) was brought up at the SAJ (Society for the Advancement of Judaism), where both her father and grandfather sat on the bimah, and she celebrated becoming bat mitzvah there in 1951, chanting the sidra and the haftarah. She repeated that on Zoom on the 70th anniversary in 2021. Mim lives in Chevy Chase, Md., with her spouse of 30 years, Carol Stern. Both are active members of Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda.

Essays

Entrance with wooden doors and the words The Society for the Advancement of Judaism engraved above.

The Founding of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ) Was Significant: Not Primarily Because of the ‘First Bat Mitzvah’

April 26, 2022

The big news was the founding of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ) earlier that same year, creating an institution where radical change could happen.

Miriam Eisenstein

Essays

The Founding of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ) Was Significant: Not Primarily Because of the ‘First Bat Mitzvah’

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