Every weekend, Avigail Schneiman experiences something that tests her fortitude and reinforces her Jewish identity.
It’s not Shabbat services or time with family. It’s not related to her job as associate director of college student networks at the Shalom Hartman Institute, either.
Schneiman’s Saturday morning routine is just plain tough: She volunteers at Philadelphia Planned Parenthood offices, serving as an escort and more often than not a human barrier between patients and pro-life protesters who are outside the buildings every day.
Sometimes these protestors are shouting rhetoric associated with the Christian far-right. Schneiman said that her exposure to this has made her even prouder to be Jewish, something that she and fellow Jewish volunteers talk about often.
“In my upbringing and I think most mainstream Jewish upbringings, the life of the mother is really prioritized in reproductive care,” she said. “A lot of us have said that we’re drawn to this [volunteer role] because of tikkun olam and [other Jewish values].”
She said it always strikes her as interesting that both parties — the group of Jewish volunteers and the protesters — are drawn to opposite sides of the same cause by religion.
“They talk to us about Jesus and try to get us to go to church on Sunday,” she said. “We just laugh to ourselves in our heads, because we talk about being Jewish all the time.”
The 28-year-old Philadelphia native returned to the city after earning an undergraduate degree in social work from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s in social work from New York University. In addition to her duties at the Shalom Hartman Institute and Planned Parenthood, Schneiman is on the board of the Young Women’s Impact Network chapter of Jewish Women International. Needless to say, Schneiman likes to fill her time with things that benefit more than just herself.
She has been that way since she was a child growing up in what she called a “conservadox” family in Fitler Square. She went to Jewish day school, shul on the weekends and kept kosher in the house. While she doesn’t officially belong to a synagogue currently, Schneiman attends Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel and Mekor Habracha with her family. She said that she enjoyed attending synagogue and growing up in the city.
“It’s a city, so it’s a very diverse community. For me, it was nice to grow up there and be a part of a Jewish community where not everyone practices the same way,” she said. “My family kept Shabbat, but a lot of our friends didn’t, and we would all walk to the synagogue together and hang out somewhere afterwards.”
These experiences also led Schneiman to choose her professional path. Working with college students gives her a chance not just to mold impressionable minds, but also to learn from young thinkers who bring their own wisdom to the table. Mostly, her job entails planning programs for alumni, but there are also moments where she gets to see the payoff for her hard work.
“Last weekend, we were teaching and a student who is very involved with us and has heard this framework [on community involvement] many times was still able to poke at it and find new ways to explore his thoughts with it — it was really impactful to me,” she said.
Schneiman began at the Shalom Hartman Institute after a contact she met through her time at Hillel in college recommended she apply for a campus student relationship coordinator position. She got the job and has been rising up the ranks ever since. After one year in that role, she was made manager of student relationships. Schneiman worked in that role for almost two years before being promoted to her current position in May of this year.
“I think there is so much development that students make outside of the classroom while they’re in college — they’re figuring out who they want to be, and I feel very drawn to being a part of that journey for them,” she said. “Helping them figure out what it means to be a young Jewish adult and what different tracks they could take. I like working with students in a way where they’re not being graded but just figuring out how they look at the world.”
Apart from getting to mold young minds, Schneiman’s favorite part of her job is visiting the company’s office in Israel a few times a year. Her most recent trip was jarring.
“When I was there in March, it felt different,” she said.
Schneiman said that the time she has spent in Israel has really shaped her as a person.
“It genuinely feels like a second home,” she said. “I have an office, a desk, coworkers and a routine there — hopefully I’ll be back in December.”
Until then, she’ll be working hard, continuing to volunteer and spending her free time enjoying the city that raised her. Schneiman said that in her free time she lives to go swimming, work out, hang out with friends and try new restaurants.
Schneiman has enjoyed the short time she has spent at her new post at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and said that she believes in the organization because its mission aligns with her own.
“We want to be a force for good for Jewish people in the state of Israel and the diaspora as well,” she said.
