Learning Circles at CJM: LGBTJews in the Federal City

Learning Circles at CJM is a new program series designed to bring educators from across the region together to learn from their colleagues. Each program features local educators who bring unique expertise. Leveraging the Museum as a site of discussion and connection, each Learning Circle will use the exhibitions as a gateway to new perspectives, enhanced curricula, and better pedagogy.

In this first Learning Circle program, participants will tour LGBTJews in the Federal City and then join one of three conversations led by local educators and focused on topics related to LGBTQ+ inclusion in Jewish classrooms and curricula. In this program, Circle Leaders will be:

• Tali Moscowitz is the Mid-Atlantic Regional Director at Moving Traditions. She is passionate about building connections and relationships within the Jewish community. Tali has spent most of her career working with Jewish teens and loves to help teens find their own Jewish path. She holds a BA in Elementary Education from American University, a post-baccalaureate certificate in pre-medicine from American University, and an MS in Nonprofit Management with a Certificate in Jewish Communal Service from Gratz College.

• Grace McMillan is the Nancy and Paul M. Hamburger Jewish Text High School Department Chair at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, MD. She teaches courses on Jewish ethics, Tanakh, and how contemporary Jewish communities respond to ancient texts and the diversity of Jewish identities. Prior to starting at CESJDS, Grace worked for The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, The Jerusalem Post, and as a TA at both Stanford and Harvard University. She has a passion for civil discourse and amplifying the diversity of voices and experiences in Jewish and American communities.

• Liora Ostroff is the founding education director at the New Synagogue Project (NSP) in Washington, D.C. She developed a new Hebrew curriculum that is centered on Tanakh and liturgy, offers gender-expansive language for liturgy as well as Nonbinary Hebrew Project adaptations, and emphasizes Hebrew as a rich and holy language. From 2021 to 2023 she was the curator-in-residence at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, where she developed the exhibitions A Fence Around the Torah: Safety and Unsafety in Jewish Life and My Odessa: Paintings by Yefim Ladyzhensky.

Image: Photograph by Lloyd Wolf. Gift of the photographer. Capital Jewish Museum Collections.