Our guest today is Rabbi Lisa Rubin, Director of the Center for Exploring Judaism at Central Synagogue in Manhattan. She has helped Jews and non-Jews engage with ritual, text, and tradition since 2010. In this conversation, Rabbi Rubin explores how we learn and embrace rituals and how many of us may already be practicing rituals without even realizing it.
Release date: 5/22/26
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We’ve all experienced the calming, mediative state that water can produce. Think about the bath that ends a terrible day, the shower that starts the one we’re dreading, or the ocean that makes every problem feel briefly, mercifully small. Scientists call the calming, meditative state that water can create by lowering stress and quieting mental noise the “blue mind effect.”
Judaism has long understood this intuitively. Even the simple ritual of washing hands before a meal marks a shift from one state to another. The mikvah, Judaism’s ancient practice of immersion in natural water, is built on the idea that water can hold us through transitions and help mark change. In our conversation with Rabbi Rubin, she invites us to expand that frame: “What if the first time we’re in an ocean every summer, we think about our swimming as a mikvah immersion?” By bringing intention, she suggests, any body of water can become a ritual container. This guidebook is our attempt to take her up on that invitation.
Director of the Center for Exploring Judaism at Central Synagogue
Rabbi Lisa Rubin joined Central Synagogue in Manhattan in 2010 as Director of the Center for Exploring Judaism, where she welcomes anyone interested in learning about Jewish tradition. Her passion for outreach and interfaith engagement grew in part from her early leadership role with Project Understanding, a Long Island foundation that brings Catholic and Jewish teens to Israel following a period of interfaith study.
Rabbi Rubin was ordained from the New York campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2006 after a first career in youth marketing and advertising at Leo Burnett in Chicago. She is originally from Atlanta, and graduated from the University of Michigan with honors.
Outside of work, Rabbi Rubin is an avid tennis player and fan. She is the COO of her Westchester household where she lives with her husband, three children, dog, goldfish, and hermit crabs.
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