Rabbi Miriam Hoffman will return to her Hillel roots on July 1 after a year of serving Am Kolel Jewish Renewal Community in Rockville.

The Washington, D.C., resident isn’t going far from the home she’s built. Hoffman is set to succeed Rabbi Daniel Epstein as the next senior Jewish educator at George Washington University Hillel.

“Before coming to D.C., I was the rabbi at [Hillel at] Brandeis [University], so I’m sort of going back to those roots,” Hoffman said. “I love working with college students. I think it’s just such an interesting time in people’s lives, and there’s so much growth and challenge and change and joy … I just love Hillel work and I’m excited to go back to it.”

Hoffman discovered her love for Jewish life on campus as an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona, where she was an involved Hillel student leader. She interned at USC Hillel in Los Angeles and worked at Brandeis Hillel as its senior Reform Jewish educator.

After two years in that role, Hoffman relocated from Waltham, Massachusetts, to the nation’s capital to join Am Kolel in July 2025.

“So excited to finally announce that I will be moving to DC to start working with Am Kolel!” Hoffman wrote in a June 2025 Instagram post. “Am Kolel was founded to meet the spiritual needs of the community in a welcoming, inclusive manner and to respond to issues facing society with a progressive Jewish voice. I’m thrilled to join this community and serve as their Judaic Program Director.”

Her role was a temporary one, so she knew from the outset that her tenure would last anywhere from one to three years. “This was sort of a trial for this position,” Hoffman said. “Am Kolel is in the middle of its own transition and trying to figure out what’s coming next for the organization, so I knew that this was going to be temporary.”

“It worked out for the organization and for me that this would only be for one year,” she added.

“I very much appreciate her contribution this year to Am Kolel,” Am Kolel’s founder, Rabbi David Shneyer, told Washington Jewish Week. “She’s been a wonderful teacher.”

While the community offered Shabbat services and kiddush lunch every Shabbat morning, they didn’t gather for Oneg Shabbats. Shneyer tasked Hoffman with bringing folks in at least one Friday night a month. Now, Am Kolel’s monthly gatherings bring in around 20 to 30 attendees, an effort that Shneyer said he will continue thanks to Hoffman.

“Part of her job has been to explore needs in the community, especially relating to the needs of an aging population, and so she spent significant time exploring that and assessing those needs,” Shneyer said of Hoffman.

As a result of that exploration, the Judaic program director also visited local senior living communities to lead Jewish educational programs and Shabbat services.

“[Using] what she has discovered, we’re hoping to move forward next year with some programs for that population in the Jewish community,” Shneyer said.

Hoffman reflected on her year with Am Kolel, adding that she loved the community.

“I think we did a lot of really cool programs, a lot of great classes, [and] we brought in some really wonderful speakers,” Hoffman said.

Her two favorite programs have been Am Kolel’s Passover Seder and Eilu v’Eilu: An Open Reflection Project.

So many community members expressed interest in the Seder that Am Kolel was filled to the brim, spilling over onto a waitlist — the space can accommodate 30 to 35 people, according to Hoffman.

“A bunch of people wanted to join us, which we didn’t expect, and we were just really grateful and excited and bummed that we had to say no to people,” she said.

Hoffman created a Haggadah in partnership with one that Shneyer had previously made. “It was just a really lovely evening,” she said.

She also led Eilu v’Eilu, a 15-week program that aimed to help participants “learn how to articulate complicated feelings about complicated topics, and how to listen and respond to other people’s thoughts and feelings about those topics.”

Topics of discussion included God, prayer, Torah, Israel, Jewish diaspora, chosenness, mortality and the afterlife, antisemitism, aging and peoplehood.

“It was intentionally not a class,” Hoffman explained. “I didn’t bring any sources. I wasn’t necessarily teaching. It was really for reflection … That was a really successful and meaningful project that I was glad to be a part of.”

Participants indicated that they would come back for another iteration of Eilu v’Eilu with new topics.

For much of the past year, Hoffman has worked closely with Shneyer.

“He has an incredible legacy and I am grateful to have seen him in action,” Hoffman said of the founding rabbi.

“I certainly wish her well,” Shneyer said. “I think the position she has at GW Hillel as [senior] Jewish educator is fantastic, and I wish her all the best.”

Hoffman said she looks forward to staying in the nation’s capital.

“I’m glad that GW worked out so well,” she said. “I love D.C., and I have such a great community here … I’m so happy to be here, so when this opportunity came up, not only is it in the city, but it’s at Hillel. I had to jump on it.”

The rabbi plans to take the skills she’s gained through Am Kolel to GW Hillel, despite the differing demographics — the Rockville Renewal community is largely older adults.

“I had never really worked with that population before, so I learned a lot about adaptability and different ways of teaching and explaining and working with different types of populations, which of course will be helpful going back to [working at a] college,” Hoffman said.

She added that at Am Kolel, she learned to lead programming without the backing of a large institution.

“Hillel has Hillel International. There are so many systems in place, and there are legacy programs, and then for Am Kolel, it is its own community, completely has its own systems, it can create for itself and from nothing … so there’s a little bit more room for creativity and for play,” Hoffman said. “So I’m excited to bring that spirit with me to [GW] Hillel.”

Beginning in July, Hoffman will spend her summer getting accustomed to GW’s campus and preparing for the High Holidays, which fall in September this year.

“I’m excited for the day-to-day campus life, connecting with students … one-on-one relationship building and being a mentor for students,” Hoffman said. “I will also be working with [Rabbi] Daniel Novick, the executive director, and doing a lot of the big-picture visioning about how to make Jewish education more baked into the fabric of Hillel.”

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com