About

“Rabbi Akiva said: ‘Chant it every day, Chant it every day.'” (San 99b)

What is piety? “A song every day, a song every day.” Every morning we begin with a prayer: “Make sweet, we beseech Thee, O Lord our God, the words of Thy Torah in our mouth.”

There is a fountain in a sacred deed. It plays an eternal tune to the soul that washes its own wilderness away. — Abraham Joshua Heschel, God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

Virginia Avniel Spatz (she/her; they is fine), a native of Chicago, lives and writes in Washington, DC.

Spatz has lived with her husband, Cary O’Brien, in what is now known as the Hill East neighborhood of the District for over thirty years. They have two children, graduates of homeschooling followed by DC public high schools and then college, each living on the West Coast.

She is active in several Jewish communities, in DC and beyond. She advocates for cross-denominational and interfaith understanding. Years back, she helped coordinate the Washington Chapter of the AJC’s Women’s Interdenominational Leadership Dialogue and directed the local, cross-community Jewish Study Center. See Rereading4Liberation for some additional Torah explorations, including “Omer on the Anacostia” (2022). An older extended Jewish journey focused on Exploring Babylon on this site.

Spatz contributes to We Act Radio programming and regularly wrote for East of the River and The Education Town Hall. Her writing has also appeared in other local and national periodicals and in the book, All the Women Followed Her: A Collection of Writings on Miriam the Prophet & The Women of Exodus. More Publications.

She manages the “We Luv Books” website and serves as project manager for Charnice Milton Community Bookstore, housed at We Act Radio in DC’s Historic Anacostia neighborhood. See also vspatz.net for not-so-Jewish writing and journalism.