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Emma Fischer. (Courtesy of Emma Fischer)<\/p>\nEmma Fischer. (Courtesy of Emma Fischer)<\/p>\n
As an undergraduate, a peer once asked Emma Fischer if Jewish men wore the \u201clittle hats\u201d to hide their horns. Rather than get angry or react in horror, she calmly explained that the question was rooted in an old antisemitic trope and wasn\u2019t at all true.<\/p>\n
Word got around campus that Fischer was a \u201csafe person\u201d for questions about Judaism, something students at the small liberal arts college in Atlanta didn\u2019t know much about at the time. For some, Fischer was the first Jewish person they\u2019d ever met.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was many a day in the dining hall where people would have questions for me, and often, my answers would begin with, \u2018Listen, I\u2019m not a rabbi, but here\u2019s what I can tell you,\u2019\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n
That got her thinking: \u201cHold on, I really like this.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI really love and value the trust and faith that people put in me, and the relationship that I\u2019m able to build with them,\u201d Fischer said. \u201cAnd I love Judaism. What if I was a rabbi?\u201d<\/p>\n
She found a nearby Reconstructionist synagogue, fell into the academic study of religion and worked there for a year, ultimately graduating with a degree in religion and social justice.<\/p>\n
The West Philadelphia resident is now a fifth-year rabbinical student at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote. She intends to graduate in 2027 with a master\u2019s degree in Hebrew letters and with rabbinic ordination.<\/p>\n
Fischer is also in her second year as the rabbinic intern at Hillel at Drexel University. The Hillel is currently celebrating the 10th anniversary of its building of its building, so \u201cthis is a really special time to be part of Drexel Hillel,\u201d according to Fischer.<\/p>\n
She described her role as \u201ca little bit of everything,\u201d including leading services and Torah study, teaching classes, having one-on-one coffee chats with students, offering pastoral support and participating in Hillel activities, all while being a rabbinical student.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes our finals schedules line up and I study for my finals while they study for their finals,\u201d Fischer said. \u201cSometimes a student has a terrible breakup, and I\u2019m a sympathetic shoulder to lean on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her work aligns with the season. Leading up to October, Fischer taught a miniseries of Jewish learning about monsters, angels and demons, diving into Jewish folklore and exploring the lesser-known, \u201cspooky\u201d side of Jewish tradition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cook with students, I bake with students, I study Torah with students,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m there for the ups and downs of their undergraduate life, where the job offers and [Cooperative Education] acceptances and the breakups and the study sessions. I get to accompany them throughout their college experience, and it\u2019s really fun and special.\u201d<\/p>\n
She most recently completed a unit of clinical pastoral education at the Children\u2019s Hospital of Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
Before that, Fischer taught religious school at Germantown Jewish Centre and served as rabbinic intern at Congregation B\u2019nai Abraham in Bordentown, New Jersey, and the Kaiserman JCC in Wynnewood.<\/p>\n
Prior to rabbinical school, she worked as a preschool teacher at her childhood synagogue, then moved to New Orleans to participate in Avodah\u2019s Jewish Service Corps for a year, helping provide services to individuals returning home from incarceration. The age difference between preschoolers and Hillel students is sizable, but Fischer has discovered they\u2019re not too fundamentally different.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe things that I really loved about preschool and religious school that I now love about working with undergraduates [are] the joy and the brightness and the inquisitiveness,\u201d she said. \u201cThe questions that my undergraduates ask me are significantly harder than the questions my preschoolers and religious school students ever asked me. But the underlying curiosity and enthusiasm is absolutely still there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though she spent the first 24 years of her life living in the South \u2014 she was one of a small handful of Jewish kids growing up in Nashville \u2014 Fischer considers herself a \u201cPhilly girl.\u201d Her family emigrated to the U.S. and settled in Philadelphia for three generations.<\/p>\n
Thanksgivings marked annual trips to Philly for Fischer.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have long loved the city and the culture and the food, so coming back to Philadelphia for school felt really special as a sort of homecoming,\u201d she said. \u201cI feel really proud to call Philadelphia my home for the last five years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just under 200 days from ordination, Fischer is on the hunt for a full-time rabbinic position. She hopes to continue working in a campus context.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also would love anything related to education, anything related to opportunities for Jewish joy,\u201d Fischer said.<\/p>\n
The rabbinic student is open to returning to pediatric chaplaincy as well, if that\u2019s where her path leads.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think people have this image of chaplaincy as very serious, and it often is, and [it\u2019s also] the giggles that you get from patients and with patients and families,\u201d Fischer said. \u201cI am interested in pursuing Jewish joy, and I will see where that takes me.\u201d<\/p>\n
zbell@midatlanticmedia.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emma Fischer. (Courtesy of Emma Fischer) As an undergraduate, a peer once asked Emma Fischer if Jewish men…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6981,131941,8055,131942,131943,131944,126300,69,71,70,131945,111427,61867,8402],"class_list":["post-325732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-childrens-hospital-of-philadelphia","tag-drexel-hillel","tag-drexel-university","tag-jewish-education","tag-jewish-joy","tag-jewish-tradition","tag-kaiserman-jcc","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-rabbinic-intern","tag-rabbinical-school","tag-reconstructionist-rabbinical-college","tag-you-should-know"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}