Victoria’s Ashkenazi family are poor and working class Jews in Southern California, her Latineh family a blend of US and Mexicaneh indigenous. A first generation college graduate (on both sides), she came up to Northern California for the education, but stayed for the food and communities of political advocacy.
Learning Jewish rituals in college that her secular family did not observe, Victoria found Kehilla right away. A year later she celebrated an adult b’mitzvah in Kehilla’s first adult cohort, probably the first one in the family in two generations. Temporarily disabled at the time for two years, she began to learn organizing from amazing friends in the disabled community, advocating for themselves as the Disability Justice movement formed.
Over the decades Victoria has volunteered in various areas of the congregation: Kehilla School, Spiritual Life Practices Council, Economic Justice Committee, and most recently on the DEIB Team and its BIPOC Congress. She’s joining the Board now to give back once more to this congregation that has been a home away from home for so long.
Other loves of Victoria’s include mentoring niblings in her family, teaching patients holistic health as a Doctor of Ayurveda, and pursuing mysticism as an avocation and in her work as a Spiritual Director.