Nurtured by Jewish community since birth, Ruth is a “Jew-by-destiny” who officially converted twenty years ago. She has been an early childhood educator since graduating from Mills College in Oakland, California. Her work in the classroom focuses on outdoor education, intercultural empathy, and the ancient technology called reading.
Ruth is a hereditary gardener whose land work focuses on ecosystems, forest stewardship, and sustainable home food production. She creates earth-based meditations using the four elements and deep connection to specific patches of earth.
Ruth is matriarch to a large, unaffiliated/intermarried yet fiercely Jewish mishpochah. Hoping to inspire other mishpochim committed to passing on Jewish identity in extranormative settings, Ruth is working with her husband and daughters to develop a simcha/yomtov/shabbos practice they call “Backyard Judaism”.
Ruth and her family live in the Bay Area and on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains.