When Rabbi Miriam Terlinchamp appeared on an episode of the “Judaism Unbound” podcast last year to talk about her new online Jewish conversion class, she never could have imagined the impact it would have.
The episode would soon change her life — and those of two of her listeners.
Ari Kingsman and Joshua Phillips were cellmates inside the Monroe Correctional Complex in Washington State with a shared interest in Judaism. After hearing the podcast, they wrote to Terlinchamp to ask if she would help them convert.
“I just listened to your interview on ‘Judaism Unbound,’ and you said that the gates should be open for more people,” Phillips wrote to Terlinchamp. “I hope I am one of those people.”
In the year-long journey that followed, Terlinchamp would take up the challenge, traveling across the country to supervise two decidedly non-traditional conversions to Judaism from inside a prison — a setting where, to her knowledge, no other rabbi has agreed to stage a conversion before.
Read on for their story.