About the narrator:
Beth Strassler is the cantor and spiritual leader of Congregation Etz Chaim, a non-denominational synagogue in Biddeford, Maine, and an active Jewish community member in Biddeford and beyond. Her interview details her early life, education, transition to Judaism from a Presbyterian upbringing, introduction to Jewish religious and cultural practices, work as a cantor, board member, and community member, and her participation in the mitzvah of mikvah, along with observations of other mikva’ot. She also served as a board member of Mikvat Shalom, the former open mikvah at Sha’arey Tphiloh in Portland. This interview is especially valuable for researchers looking for insights on Mikvat Shalom, and the challenges involved in opening an open mikvah in Portland, Maine.
In this excerpt from her interview with Ethan Eskin at her home in Arundel on January 17, 2025, Cantor Strassler discusses her experience of Mayyim Hayyim, a mikvah in Newton, Massachusetts.
Transcript:
“It just is such a welcoming place. And it doesn’t feel like I’m being told what to do – just because you have to do it that way. I feel like I can always mold it and bend it to what I need. And that feels really, really positive. And I think that’s how I get what I need, because I am able to create [an] experience for myself that’s meaningful. I don’t know, it just really feels like a holy place. It’s amazing. It feels like a loss in my life that I don’t have better access to something like that. But I don’t.” – Cantor Beth Strassler
Beth Strassler’s full oral history interview is available through Colby’s Special Collections & Archives.
About the interviewer:
Ethan Eskin, a junior at Colby College studying neuroscience and music, chose to conduct his interview with Cantor Strassler in part because he was interested in her musical background. Having grown up in Los Angeles, California as a secular Jew, neither he nor Strassler are native to Maine.
Reflecting on the path of religious conversion, Ethan discovered that while “the root of the desire to convert is, of course, interest…it just sticks out to me how important research and learning is to the Jewish experience. And it makes me consider the fact that by the steps of conversion, I am now considerably ‘more Jewish’ than I was at the start of this class.”