Ma'yan is anon-profit organization supporting research, education, and advocacy with and on behalf of adolescent girls. Ma'yan is housed in theJCC inManhattan.[1]
Ma'yan was founded in 1993 byBarbara Dobkin and Eve Landau, as Ma'yan: The Jewish Women's Project. The organization aimed to empower women in Jewish ritual and contemporary Jewish culture.[2]
The organization was instrumental in popularizing the feministPassover Seder, which reconceives the passover rituals in order to celebrate women's role in the Passover story and Judaism as a whole. Ma'yan's feminist seder notably includes a cup forMiriam on the table in addition to the cup forElijah. According toThe New York Times, "The first Ma'yan seder was held in 1994 with 150 women and a waiting list of another 100 who could not get in. Within a few years, Ma'yan was holding them at a catering space with room for 500 people, and holding them on four consecutive nights."[3]
A feminist passoverhaggadah,The Journey Continues published by Ma'yan,[4] sold over 40,000 copies.[5]
Additionally, between 1997 and 2004, Ma'yan published Journey,[6] a tri-annual journal about women and Jewish spirituality.
In 2006, Ma'yan re-cast itself. The organization believed it had been successful in creating a change in the Jewish community, as demonstrated by the ubiquity of the feminist seder. "We can give it up because it became mainstream," said Ma'yan co-founder Eve Landau.[3] Ma'yan changed its name from Ma'yan: The Jewish Women's Project toMa'yan: Listen for a change and now works with adolescent girls and educators around issues of privilege, social justice, and feminism.[7]
