Jewish education is “everything” to Mckinley Edelman, who worked on Capitol Hill before transitioning to a full-time career at a synagogue.
She is the director of education at Temple Micah in northwest Washington, D.C., a “really special place” where she’s worked for more than four years.
“Everybody really wants to be here,” Edelman said of the Reform synagogue. “There’s a demand for serious intellectual rigor that I find compelling and inspiring, [and] pushes me to want to learn more every day.”
Edelman used her bachelor’s degree in political science during the seven years she worked for three different members of California’s congressional delegation. The Capitol Hill resident is currently pursuing an executive master’s in Jewish education from Hebrew Union College.
In her free time, Edelman enjoys dance parties with her two toddlers, doing yoga and finding the best sushi spots in D.C.
Tell me about your Jewish upbringing and background.
I’m from central California — Fresno. I grew up at a really wonderful Reform congregation called Temple Beth Israel, a really important part of my childhood, and the religious school director there, Jeanna Francis, was instrumental in my upbringing and my Jewish identity. I grew up going to Camp Newman, which is a [Union for Reform Judaism] camp up in northern California. I was really involved in [North American Federation of Temple Youth] and was our youth group president, so I’ve always been closely connected to Jewish community.
What prompted your shift from political science on the Hill to a synagogue?
It’s a big change. I had somewhat of an unusual path to the Jewish professional world. I never worked professionally full-time in Jewish education or in a Jewish sphere, though Judaism was always a really important piece of my life. So as soon as I moved to Washington, D.C., about 12 years ago to work on the Hill, I was an unpaid intern, and I got a job as a Sunday school teacher here at Temple Micah and met the then-associate assistant rabbi running the school, Josh Beraha, who’s our associate rabbi now. I fell in love with Temple Micah. I taught there for five years, teaching the same kids from third grade until their b’nai mitzvah in seventh grade, which was really special.
While I was working on the Hill and really enjoying that job, as I got older and my priorities shifted, I found it increasingly more difficult for me to bring my whole self to my workplace on the Hill, working in a congresswoman’s office. I felt like I was “Capitol Hill Mckinley” in my office and “Mom Mckinley” at home, and it didn’t feel coherent to my lived life. I felt really lucky that there happened to be a position open at Temple Micah and I took the leap.
Why is Jewish education important to you?
Jewish education is kind of everything to me when I think about the future of American Judaism — I think it’s really resting in the hands of Jewish education, of making families and parents feel like they have an ownership over their Jewish home, that they feel like they’re excited and confident in raising Jewish children. I think raising kids to be proud of their Jewish identity and to deeply know what it means to be Jewish, to have a deep foundation of text and tradition in a modern world is a beautiful thing. All of our ancient texts are so applicable today; human problems are the same always, like how do you balance taking care of other people while taking care of yourself? I think it’s so special that we have this ancient tradition to look back on and help guide us through those things.
What do you enjoy most about your work?
I really enjoy watching my students when things click for them, whether it’s historically contextualizing things like putting pieces together and they’re realizing a chain of events, or when they finally read that Hebrew word and they’re so proud of themselves. I like watching children achieve difficult things because I don’t think it’s easy learning Jewish things. It’s not easy, so I love watching when the light bulb goes on for them.
What’s something you’ve learned from being an active part of D.C.’s Jewish community?
I think being Jewish in D.C. is different than being Jewish anywhere else. We’re so deeply influenced by the national landscape that exists here. I think it’s really interesting to see how people’s Judaism influences their lens on politics and vice versa, like how they both interact with each other.
What are your goals?
I’m in the middle of getting my master’s at HUC in Jewish education, which is really exciting. Completing that is certainly a goal of mine. Then, long-term, we have lots of dreams about what Jewish education could look like at Temple Micah. I have a really wonderful partner, our rabbi educator Samantha Frank, [and] she and I love to dream about how we can expand things. Concretely, our goals would be our kids leaving Temple Micah when they’re 18 and having tons of questions about Judaism. That’s the real goal, but the doors are wide open right now in terms of what we see on the horizon at Micah, so I feel like there are a million goals.
