Rabbi Mira Rivera’s favorite inspirational quote, she told New York Jewish Week, is from dancer and choreographer Martha Graham: “I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. … One becomes in some area an athlete of God.”
Rivera is the first Filipina-American woman ordained at The Jewish Theological Seminary; she serves as Rabbi-in-Residence nationally with The LUNAR Collective and locally at the Jewish Community Center in Harlem; and her work has been recognized with the The Rabbinical Excellence Award from Harlem’s District 9 and the Rabbinic Human Rights Hero Award from T’ruah.
But before all of that, Rivera was a dancer. She danced for the Martha Graham Dance Company and Ensemble under the mentorship of Yuriko Kikuchi and performed under the auspices of Actors’ Equity. As a performing artist and teacher, she reached hundreds of New York City public school children through National Dance Institute and the Irene Diamond Summer Institute.
At 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, Rivera will continue the Week Nine Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “All Rise: Save Us and Look Beyond,” a week exploring, from numerous faith traditions, what it means to seek salvation, and what it means to look beyond the suffering and limitations of human life on earth, and beyond the horizon of all we can know or understand.
The 21st female spiritual leader invited to deliver the Pat Reif Memorial Lectureship at Claremont Graduate University, Rivera was named by New York Jewish Week to its list of “36 to Watch” in 2023. In her interview with the publication, Rivera described how her Jewish identity and experience influences her work.
“My melanin, accent and how I present as a Filipina-American woman in Jewish spaces shapes how that world perceives me. My proud identification of my ethnicity is one way that I acknowledge my privilege,” she said. “I hope to counter the erasure experienced by (my) siblings from the Philippines who are deeply embedded in Israeli families and diaspora Jewish worlds as caregivers to elders and ailing people.”
As Rabbi-in-Residence at The LUNAR Collective, a Gen-Z founded organization by and for Asian American Jews, Minerva helps the organization cultivate connection, belonging and visibility for Asian American Jews through intersectional community programming and authentic digital storytelling. From 2018 to 2022, she was associate rabbi at Kehillat Romenu; in 2019, she told The Jewish News of California that there, she’d found a place where she felt welcomed, and wanted other Jews of color to find a similar place, whether in a congregation or through connections — physical or virtual — with others who share their identity.
“I think in many ways we are possibly where the LGBTQ community was attempting years and years and decades ago,” she told the publication. “Now we have language and we can find each other.”
