Three weeks after she was ordained as a Jewish storyteller in a living room ceremony, Phyllis Binik-Thomas has died at the age of 63. Binik-Thomas, who was profiledin the Forward, had completed three years of coursework to become a maggid before she was diagnosed with a fast-moving form of cancer. She passed away on July…
For several years, Phyllis Binik-Thomas dreamt of becoming a storyteller, or maggid, to take her commitment intergenerational Jewish communication to another level. She wasn’t going to let cancer prevent her from reaching that goal. As beaming family and friends gathered in her Cincinnati living room, Binik-Thomas was ordained as a maggid educator on Tuesday afternoon…
David Arfa’s walks in the woods might seem like an ordinary embrace of the outdoors. But those hikes – on which he leads groups of children – actually form part of a venerable Jewish tradition. Arfa, who lives in western Massachusetts, identifies as a maggid, a religious storyteller common across Eastern Europe, especially in the…
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