When Gulienne Rollins-Rishon was growing up, her interfaith parents raised her in a household practicing both Judaism and Catholicism. She liked the bagels and lox that her Jewish mother fed her, but she also loved saying “peace be with you” and gazing up at the stained-glass windows in the church she attended with her father.
But there was one day when a realization hit her, and she knew she wasn’t Christian.
In her family’s backyard, there were a number of big trees that hung over the sparkling pool. Once, as a young girl, she looked out at the yard and its beauty and thought back to something she learned about each religion.
“How I knew about the elements yet, I’m not sure, but I remember thinking, ‘We have sun, we have Earth, we have air and we have water, and they are all working together in this perfect harmony to be this beautiful moment,’” she said. “My parents [had] said, ‘That’s what the whole world is going to be like all the time when the Messiah has come.’ And it’s not like that all the time. So I’m going to keep going to church, but I’m not Christian. I don’t think the Messiah has come yet.”
Rollins-Rishon said that, importantly, she wasn’t completely sure she was Jewish either in that moment; that assurance came later. But that experience set the stage for a life rooted in Jewish values, one in which, today, the Lower Merion resident works on behalf of Jewish nonprofits.
Rollins-Rishon is a consultant for Tiny Windows, a company that helps Jewish nonprofits with outward-facing communications, marketing and more.
“As we like to say, [we] sort of open a tiny window, helping organizations tell their story, whether that’s through conference planning or strategic planning or doing communications work or branding work,” she said. “It’s just a sort of way to help nonprofits do their work more clearly and reach their audience.”
For someone guided by Jewish values, this work is apt. She described helping one company fulfill its mission in a way that is more in line with Jewish teachings.
“We helped create this series of workshops for girls who are interested in public speaking and advocacy, to really learn these advocacy and public speaking skills from a Jewish and more feminist approach,” she said.
Rollins-Rishon feels compelled to work on behalf of these marginalized groups in part because of her own background. She is biracial, and she said that much of her professional career has been spent advocating for Jews of diverse backgrounds, which includes time spent as the racial justice and inclusion specialist for the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, a network of Conservative shuls.
“I’m half Ashkenazi and half non-Jewish black. Being here in the Lower Merion area, it actually has very rarely come up, at least in the earlier parts of getting to know people,” she said. “At some point, folks are curious, and they want to know what my story is. But I think that’s true for anybody. Jews are curious people, and we’re not known for having very good boundaries about being intrusive about people’s stories.”
She recalled one story that exemplifies the misguided if well-intentioned treatment that some biracial Jews face. While back in her hometown outside New York City as a young woman, Rollins-Rishon visited the synagogue she had grown up attending on occasion for a service. An older congregant whom she knew from her days as a teen approached her during the service.
“This woman whose grandkids I used to babysit for clearly couldn’t place me, but felt some sort of affinity — and I don’t know whether I looked familiar to her or she just saw a new person and [wanted] to be helpful — but in the middle of the silent Amidah, she came over and told me which page we’re on,” Rollins-Rishon said.
Rollins-Rishon grew up “on the border” of Reform and Conservative, and she now considers herself Modern Orthodox, belonging to both Congregation Beth Hamedrosh in Penn Wynne and Sha’arei Orah Congregation in Bala Cynwyd.
“I’m literally already doing this, so maybe it was well-meaning, but also, ask me if I’d like help, maybe, instead of just assuming that I need it,” she said.
In her position with United Synagogue, Rollins-Rishon discussed life as a biracial Jew and intersectional advocacy on a daily basis. Much of her career has been spent helping traditional Jewish spaces become more welcoming for all members of the tribe.
“I help support communities in not putting their foot in their mouth — there are a lot of times when I’m in the role of [answering], ‘Well, so what should we say?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, you could start with ‘hello and Shabbat Shalom,’” she said.
Rollins-Rishon’s grandparents are Holocaust survivors, and her grandmother survived bombings in London during World War II.
“She was a child trapped under rubble in one of the London bombings, and she was sent to the British countryside as a Jewish child to grow up in a convent so that she would be safe,” Rollins-Rishon said.
Her grandfather escaped persecution, leaving behind the life he knew to travel on the St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees that was turned away from the United States before being forced to return to Europe.
“My stories are literally textbook,” she said. “I also found out later on that I’m a 14th-generation descendant of a really famous rabbi who was the chief rabbi of Amsterdam at some point.”
Rollins-Rishon loves her work, community and religion, and for her, all three are woven together.
“[My parents] talked about the fact that being there for each other is something that’s really unifying in Judaism and Catholicism,” she said. “Judaism is a communal religion, and that is incredibly important. Being there for each other is really important.”