Erin Ring has kept close ties to the Jewish community throughout her personal and professional life, working in education, nonprofits and as a project manager while serving as the vice president of Kehilat Pardes – The Rock Creek Synagogue in Rockville.
Ring will soon become the congregation’s president, looking to continue the work done at the synagogue to expand opportunities for women and girls and the other inclusive initiatives aimed at furthering a warm atmosphere.
Can you tell me about your background and Jewish upbringing?
I’m from Augusta, Georgia. It’s a very small town two-and-a-half hours east of Atlanta. I grew up in a small, very close-knit Jewish community. My family brought me up according to the Conservative traditions. Both my parents were very involved in our shul. My mother, especially, she was very proud of her involvement and tutored a lot of b’nai mitzvah students and she was quite an inspiration for me. And she passed away when I was very young, so a lot of what I do is in connection and in memory of her … I went to University of Georgia; I was very involved with Hillel there. I was studying social studies, education and history.
What did your career path look like before you came to the DMV area?
I was looking for something to do right after college. I happened to come across the Institute of Southern Jewish Life, a Jewish nonprofit based in Jackson, Mississippi, and they have a two-year fellowship that involves recent college grads. They get a portfolio of about seven communities that they traveled to [and you serve as] an education consultant for them … The whole idea was that these communities oftentimes were struggling to get adequate resources to keep their religious school programming going. So that was a very exciting opportunity for me to just get my feet wet with some teaching and different styles of teaching and different age groups and just to have more experience in the Jewish nonprofit setting. And I met my husband there and moved up to the D.C. area about 10 years ago.
What have you been involved with in the DMV community?
I was working for a Jewish nonprofit when I first got here. It’s called Momentum. It’s a program designed to inspire Jewish mothers all over the world to connect more to Judaism, to get their families involved and to get back to their communities. And that’s done through a highly subsidized trip to Israel. I was doing that for eight years, and then I transitioned to another company into the for-profit space. I work for a company that delivers corporate training and data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence. I’m a project manager right now. And that’s been a very exciting opportunity for me. [This area has] just been an amazing place to be. It’s such a supportive, loving community.
Can you tell me about your Jewish involvement and some of the initiatives you’ve been involved with at Kehilat Pardes?
When we moved to the community, [there was this] whole idea of having more of a structured bat mitzvah service for young girls. And ever since then, we’ve put more of a structure to it and more girls have been doing it. It just really took off last year; it felt like every other month or so, [someone was participating]. It was just amazing to see how that had taken off. When I first arrived, we started doing more things like passing the Torah to the women’s side and they had just had their first women’s Torah reading when I arrived. And since then, we’ve really expanded the opportunities for women and now it’s just been very exciting to watch and we just have some incredible resources and leaders that have been sustaining that in our community.
What are some things you hope to provide to the community when you eventually become president of Kehilat Pardes?
We want to keep that [positive change for women and girls] up. A lot of our women and girls have become more comfortable leading tefillah; we would want to see growth there. I think other things that I’m looking to expand on as president, I want to make sure that we continue to be a welcoming, warm, inclusive community. That’s just something that if you if you talk to a lot of people in our community, they’ll tell you just how diverse it is, how open, how welcoming, it’s the kind of place that if you’re ever in need, something’s going on in your life, people just show up at your door with food. It’s just incredible, the support that we find there. I would want to continue to capitalize on that and make sure everyone continues to feel embraced and supported.
What is the importance of keeping a Jewish connection throughout your personal and professional life as you’ve done for most of your career?
I think it’s important just to stay involved. In my work with Kehilat Pardes, it’s more important to me just because I don’t have that Jewish connection to my professional work … There’s a lot of happiness and a greater purpose. And out of my commitment to giving back to the Jewish community, which comes from my mother …
So that’s where that passion comes from.