Teacher, Mother, Tour Guide, Rabbi
Nathan Bierma, Minds editor
Chicago Tribune
December 14, 2003

Here's how not to become a rabbi. Start out as a high school French teacher. Marry a production sound mixer for film and television. Become a tour guide. Have two kids. Then, when you finally sense the calling, take a first job at a tiny congregation where you're in charge of everything, rather than gradually rising through the ranks somewhere bigger. Oh, and replace that tiny congregation's beloved founder, the reason many of them stuck with, or came back to, Judaism.

It seems a strange and roundabout recipe for the rabbinate, except that to Alicia Magal, it all makes so much sense.

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