Community
Connections Alumni of the NextGen’s Leadership
Development Program paid it forward on
May 15 by helping pack and distribute
food at Jewish Relief Agency.

Women of Vision held their annual Spring
Event on May 19 at the French Creek Golf
Club. The event featured Pulitzer Prize-winning
investigative reporter Megan Twohey.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia builds
community by bringing people together to learn,
inspire, give back and celebrate. See how the Jewish
Federation has connected like-minded community
members through events in the past month.

On Apr. 24, many generations of community
members participated in the 58 th Annual Holocaust
Remembrance Ceremony to commemorate the six
million Jews who perished in the Shoah.

The Jewish Federation Real Estate (JFRE)
Members Only Dinner celebrated the groups’
accomplishments and learned about future
opportunities to network and support the Jewish
community. Held on Apr. 25, the event was
sponsored by Steak 48.

The Kehillah of Bucks County’s Jewish
Festival on May 15 brought together
hundreds of community members for a
day of fun, thanks to the many sponsors,
volunteers, local organizations and
synagogues, and vendors that participated.

On May 23, Women’s Philanthropy
celebrated their Pomegranate Society while
enjoying a mural arts tour of Center City.

Find out how you can get involved in the various affinity groups
of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia by visiting
jewishphilly.org/affinity or contacting Director of Affinities and
Volunteer Engagement Marni Davis at mdavis@jewishphilly.org
10 MAY 26, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



YOU SHOULD KNOW ...

Rabbi Megan GoldMarche
Courtesy of Megan GoldMarche
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
R abbi Megan GoldMarche is like many of the young
Philadelphia Jews she hopes to serve as Tribe 12’s new exec-
utive director: She’s a Philadelphia transplant with a love of
craft beer.

But the similarities run deeper than that. GoldMarche, 37, like
so many other Jewish millennials, has had to forge her Jewish path,
drawing from a patchwork of rituals, family history and lived experi-
ence. She developed a feminist seder for Shemini Atzeret and adopted
new lines from the Torah to include in her lesbian wedding ceremony.

GoldMarche is interested in the second wave of coming-of-age that
Jewish 20- and 30-somethings expe-
rience in college and beyond, when
young Jews choose their Jewish adven-
ture. It’s what she believes makes her a
good fit at Tribe 12.

“There’s something about the stage
of life where you’re deciding who you
want to be independent of your family,”
GoldMarche said. “I just loved that in
college, people for the first time were
choosing to be Jewish and figuring out
what it meant to be their own Jewish
individual.” GoldMarche’s Jewish journey at
Tribe 12 began on Feb. 1, and she
moved with her wife Paige and two
daughters to begin working full time in
Philadelphia on May 9. But it won’t be
the first time GoldMarche has looked
to the Jewish community for a warm
welcome. Growing up in the Chicago suburbs,
GoldMarche was raised culturally, but
not particularly religiously, Jewish.

When both her parents’ respective
mothers died when GoldMarche was
2, they looked to a local synagogue for
support. “The synagogue became sort of the
center of my family’s life because my
parents were so young — they were
in their early 30s — and they both
went through these major losses,”
GoldMarche said. “The synagogue
really ended up being what held them.

And so I think I was raised with the
sense that the Jewish community takes
care of us.”
Though she attended synagogue
services, Hebrew school and summer
camp, becoming a rabbi wasn’t always
in the cards for GoldMarche. Her fam-
ily didn’t keep kosher; they didn’t asso-
ciate with a strong denomination of
Judaism. GoldMarche planned on attending
the University of Pennsylvania, where
she could study psychology, expecting
to one day get a doctorate in clinical
psychology. But as one of her priorities on cam-
pus, GoldMarche joined Hillel, where
she spent more time than in her dorm
room, she joked.

“I spent all my time at the Hillel,” she
said. “I mean, Steinhardt Hall at Penn,
which opened my sophomore year, was
basically, like, the place I lived.”
At Hillel, GoldMarche found com-
pany with whom to explore the more
halachic and ritual elements of Judaism
she didn’t explore as a younger person:
learning prayers and how to observe
Shabbat and keep kosher. She was con-
fident she could balance her evolving
Jewish identity with a professional pur-
suit of psychology.

When GoldMarche graduated, she
spent time as a Jewish Campus Service
Corps fellow at Yale University and
realized she’d rather spend time with
Jewish young adults than pursue a
doctorate. “I had this ‘aha moment’ the sum-
mer between my first and second year
working for Hillel ... Even though I
had already become more religious,
I hadn’t quite become spiritual yet,”
GoldMarche said. “I had a very strong
spiritual awakening, and also a reali-
zation that building community and
helping young people find meaning
through Judaism was really what I
wanted to do.”
After a summer in Israel, GoldMarche
matriculated at the Jewish Theological
Seminary in New York, where she
became a rabbi, always intending to
return to working with younger Jews.

She moved back to Chicago and started
her family.

GoldMarche’s move back to the East
Coast is an opportunity to once more
find a smaller Jewish community and
work to augment the bonds formed
there. Tribe 12 is particularly good at this
because it creates “microcommunities,”
GoldMarche explained, such as pro-
viding opportunities for LGBTQ Jews
to connect.

Before the pandemic, GoldMarche
and her family held weekly Shabbat
dinners with 30-50 guests. After a long
period of isolation, it takes time to
rebuild lost connections.

“A big part of what I hope we’ll do
is help get people into those real rela-
tionships with people who will take
care of them when things are hard,
who will show up, maybe be lifelong
friends, potentially partners ... but
really just helping people be less alone,”
GoldMarche said. JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
11