Andrew Guckes | Staff Writer
For Hannah Isaacs-Arkin, getting hired at Adath Israel wasn’t as big of a deal as you might think. That isn’t to say that she wasn’t excited or appreciative for the opportunity; it just means she isn’t from here, and didn’t know that the community she was joining is a legendary one with a rich tradition.
“I have to be so honest, I didn’t know anything about Adath Israel’s history before I started. I’m not from this area, so it was just another synagogue to me. I didn’t know about how deep the roots ran, how amazing the clergy was. I just thought this was a really cool place that I could try being an education director,” Isaacs-Arkin said.
While she had a lot to learn — quickly — Isaacs-Arkin embraced the challenge. In fact, she thinks that, in some ways, coming in without much knowledge helped her.
“I think that in Jewish organizations, sometimes there’s a lot of, ‘Well, we’ve always done it this way,’ and I don’t really subscribe to that at all,” she said. “I want to try new things, and I want to create new programs that maybe haven’t been done before. So I think coming from a different background has been beneficial.”
Since she was hired in the summer of 2021 as education director, Isaacs-Arkin has helped guide the Adath Israel education programming so that it continues to serve members of all ages. That includes the youngest of religious school students as well as full-time working adults.
“Since my time here, we’ve made inclusion a big priority in our religious school. We hired an inclusion coordinator, because Jewish spaces haven’t always been the most inclusive spaces, and that’s something that we’re trying to help fix in a way,” she said.
Isaacs-Arkin has helped initiate accommodations for different types of learners, as well as add to some of the offerings for the young adult programming. She is always looking to do better than she did the day before, much of which can be credited to her background as a Division I athlete.
While playing field hockey at Rider University, Isaacs-Arkin was challenged but not fulfilled. That’s when she found the missing piece.
“I was playing sports, and I realized something was missing from my life. And so I went to a Hillel event and by the end of the first event, I had a position on the board,” she said. “That’s kind of where I started my Jewish leadership journey.”
While she took to her work at the Rider Hillel quickly, Isaacs-Arkin wasn’t by any means set on working a professional Jewish life.
“It is not what I thought I wanted to do. I have an undergrad degree in marketing, so I thought I wanted to go into event planning or museum studies [or something else],” she said.
After she graduated, Isaacs-Arkin found an opportunity at a synagogue in Brooklyn and jumped at the chance.
“Somebody who I went to camp with posted a youth director job at their synagogue in New York City, and so that’s where my first job was. I worked as a youth director at Congregation Beth Elohim, and that’s where I [realized] I really liked this field,” she said.
Isaacs-Arkin loved that position, but moved south to Philadelphia in 2019 to be a communications associate at Tribe 12, an organization for young Jewish professionals in the Delaware Valley. She worked there in a capacity more aligned with her marketing degree: working on social media content and brand and marketing strategies for the organization.
But again, something was missing.
“I was trying to see if I liked Jewish organizations or synagogues better, and after my almost two years at Tribe 12, I really wanted to go back to a synagogue setting,” she said.
For some people, the bustle of a synagogue can be overwhelming. For Isaacs-Arkin, it feels great. While she grew up in Reform Judaism, embracing the Conservative Adath Israel community has been a wonderful learning experience.
“I will say there was a lot of learning to do in my first couple years,” she said. “Certain customs or certain rules that I just didn’t know about, I remember my first year emailing on Sukkot when I didn’t realize that you couldn’t — I’ve come to really enjoy Conservative Judaism.”
That appreciation is largely thanks to Isaacs-Arkin’s time spent at the Jewish Theological Seminary, from which she obtained a master’s degree in Jewish Education. The school is pluralistic, which teaches students how to approach Jewish education through any lens.
For Isaacs-Arkin, that time at JTS crystalized her purpose: educating Jews of all backgrounds and helping them grow into the best versions of themselves. While working in a Jewish professional space sometimes requires her to use all of her religious bandwidth, Isaacs-Arkin and her husband still find time to practice Judaism themselves.
“It’s really challenging to have a Jewish practice when Judaism is your profession, but the way that I look at it is that my Jewish practice is creating Jewish opportunities for other people. You know, my husband and I, once in a while, will host a Shabbat dinner,” she said.
“I find that my work and my Jewish practice are so entangled that they can’t really be separated.”