When the Timing Is the Story

There is a particular kind of serendipity that doesn't announce itself. You only recognize it looking back.

In 2023, Rabbi Martin Hirsch come from Chile and immediately won the hearts of the Snoa congregation. He was wonderful, and we were excited about him in the way you are excited when something fits. The board offered him a full-time position, but before he could start, Rabbi Hirsch needed to return to Chile to prepare for the move, which meant that for six weeks the Snoa would be without a rabbi or spiritual leader. Those six weeks happened to fall over the December holidays and into the new year. A significant stretch of time. A significant season to be without spiritual leadership.

I was turning this over in my mind when I thought of Abi Oshins.

Through my work at Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, I had come to know Abi as a rabbinic student of real warmth and talent. We had just wished her bon voyage as she headed to Israel for her semester abroad. She was bright and gifted and the kind of person who makes an impression not through effort but through presence.

Then October 7 happened, and the world changed.

Abi's time in Israel was cut short. She found herself back in the Boston area, her academic calendar upended, doing her coursework virtually, without the grounding of a physical community.

And here were two unexpected vacancies finding each other. A rabbinic student without a congregation, and a congregation without a rabbi. The Snoa is not just any community. It is the oldest active Jewish congregation in the Western Hemisphere. And there was Abi, gifted and available and looking for a place to be of use. The pieces were simply there, waiting to be put together.

I brokered a meeting between Abi and members of the Snoa board. And, as I knew she would, she knocked it out of the park. It was a go.

With then Rabbinic Intern Abi Oshins in Curaçao. December 2023

A month or so later, the two of us flew down to Curaçao together. I took her around the island, introduced her to people, showed her the Snoa and island neighborhoods, introduced her to foods and customs. And then I said goodbye and left her to it.

What happened next was everything you hope for. People loved her. They loved her voice and her teachings and the particular way she worked with children. She brought something genuine and unhurried into that space, and the congregation responded in kind. She came back the following year to participate alongside the rabbi for the High Holy Days, which felt like a kind of beautiful confirmation.

For me, at the time, JCCPF had not yet formally begun. But this was one of those moments that made me understand that it was going to. That the connections between this island and its extended community, between the Snoa and the diaspora of people who carry it with them, were alive and generative and waiting to be tended. Abi's time in Curaçao was one of the first real threads in what has become a much larger weaving.