For the Sake of the Children

Rabbi Marcia has been a good friend to me and to my family.  She helped name my daughter Devorah, helped me in home schooling her, and helped form in her a rich Jewish soul.
 

I credit Marcia's trust and belief in me with  P'nai Or's first Children's Program, the one that I organized and coordinated, with a great deal of autonomy, throughout Devorah's childhood. This work was a way for me to draw on my personal abilities giving me a path to meaningful service.  It and brought me into one on one learning in Marcia's kitchen, for the sake of the children (of course), and provided me with a relationship of ongoing learning, in which I am also a grateful conduit of learning for others.
 

Brian and I found Marcia in 1990 when we were arranging our wedding.  We studied with her weekly for a year.  In that time we both became committed to Judaism.  I will always be grateful for the gentle, subtle and successful teachings that brought us to this choice.  The choice which has blessed our home, our marriage and our child. 

Over that past twenty two years of being the recipient of her unwavering kindness and ready wisdom she, and Jack too, have become firmly entrenched in my heart.

Maxine Sperling

Standing at Her Window

One of R. Marcia's "teachings" that touched me so much as a somewhat new "Renewalnik" was when she was a speaker at Temple Emanuel in Cherry Hill for their sisterhood in the mid '90's. She was talking about standing at her window, washing her hands and the gifts she got from that simple task: the gift of water just from turning the faucet; the feel of the water flowing over her hands; the awareness of the source of that water and the effort it took to bring that water to her home! In essence, the water symbolized the gifts of many and especially a gift from Hashem!

Janet Neufeld