Rabbi Miriam Senturia – The Singing Rabbi

Rabbi Miriam was the perfect officiant for our wedding ceremony at the Outdoor Art Garden in Mill Valley.
All of our guests commented at how lovely the ceremony and rabbi were!
She was extremely open and easy to talk with about ceremony options, translations and religious symbolism/​preferences. She made us feel very at ease about the entire process and was extremely open to addressing any and all suggestions and questions we had.
I would not hesitate to recommend Rabbi Miriam as your wedding officiant.

We had such a wonderful ceremony! We have received so many compliments on it! Several people have told us how they loved how heartfelt it was and how it was the best ceremony they have ever witnessed! :-)

5 stars is not enough for Rabbi Miriam. I am Jewish (cultural) and my husband Steve is Taiwanese. We wanted a wedding ceremony that combined both of our cultures and Rabbi Miriam delivered 110%.
Back in October when we hired Rabbi Miriam for our July 2015 wedding, Steve was very apprehensive to meet a Rabbi and discuss his religious beliefs. However, the moment we met Rabbi Miriam, Steve’s concerns all subsided. Rabbi Miriam has a very warm presence and wanted to get to know us, focusing on questions that made us both feel comfortable and at ease. She also was very respectful and open to making our wedding ceremony about us and representing both of our backgrounds. We immediately had no doubt that Rabbi Miriam was a good fit for us.
Leading up to the wedding we corresponded with Rabbi Miriam regularly and had 3 in person meetings to create our wedding ceremony together. Rabbi Miriam was very creative and helped us change certain parts of the ceremony to represent Steve’s culture too. For example, instead of doing the traditional 7 blessings, we had 7 of our closest family members send us their blessings for our marriage. At the ceremony, we had my Uncle read the blessings in English and Steve’s Aunt read the blessings in Mandarin. Rabbi Miriam was also very respectful to auspicious numbers and dates for Steve’s family, adding in a lucky 8^th blessing over the wine.
My favorite part of the ceremony (and wedding) was when Rabbi Miriam addressed us as a couple. Rabbi Miriam really took the time to understand our relationship and ahead of the wedding, sent us 3 questions to answer individually. It was such a special moment when Steve and I got to hear what the other person said and Rabbi Miriam made connections that we never would have expected. This was such a special moment that still makes me smile.
On our wedding day, Rabbi Miriam’s delivery was amazing. Rabbi Miriam has a beautiful singing and speaking voice and was very engaging to our entire audience. I cannot tell you the number of complements we got from family and friends about Rabbi Miriam. If you want an interesting Jewish wedding ceremony that you can really make your own, I highly recommend Rabbi Miriam!

Choosing to work with Rabbi Miriam was one of the best decisions my husband and I made. Rabbi Miriam worked closely with us to incorporate aspects of each of our traditions to develop a ceremony that was truly a reflection of who we are as a couple. When the stress of wedding planning took it’s toll, my husband and I looked forward to our meetings with Rabbi Miriam to ground us and reconnect us with the symbolism and importance of this day. All of our family and friends were so touched by her warmth, the attention to detail she provided, and her lovely voice. We are so grateful to have her involved in our special day. Her professionalism and honesty really made us feel so comfortable and allowed us to have the ceremony we truly wanted!

We had an absolutely wonderful experience with Rabbi Miriam! She skillfully navigated a raft of logistical challenges with grace and humor. First, my husband and I had met while living in California, but life had led him to join me on the East Coast. We wanted to get married in the Redwoods, and decided to plan a cross-​country wedding. In addition to that, we are an interfaith, inter-​cultural couple; he’s Taiwanese and a Humanist, and I’m an American secular Jew with Buddhist and Pagan leanings. I found Rabbi Miriam while searching for interfaith Jewish officiants, and my gut instinct about her was correct! She was willing to work with us over Skype, and in fact we had three multi-​hour Skype calls with her over the course of about six months, to talk about us as a couple, plan the ceremony, and go over logistics. Even over Skype, she put us both instantly at ease, and it was clear that she was familiar and comfortable with the questions and issues that an interfaith couple might encounter while planning a Jewish wedding.
Our ceremony was astonishingly perfect for us as a couple, and our guests laughed and cried, as did we. Everyone commented on how the ceremony was moving as well as light-​hearted, and never dragged along. She was receptive to the many changes we wanted to make to the traditional highly structured ceremony, but would also gently guide us into keeping some of the more familiar aspects, which actually became some of the highlights of the ceremony. From the first prayer to the breaking of the glass, Rabbi Miriam helped us to create a sacred container in which to perform the sacrament of our joining in marriage. We could not have done it without her.
Her fee is not cheap, but we knew we were paying not just for her rabbinical expertise, but also the spiritual guidance through the surprisingly contemplative process of planning a wedding. We highly recommend her, particularly to interfaith couples and those who would like to use having a Jewish wedding as a way to delve into their lapsed faith and bring a sense of spiritual depth to their new partnership. We only wish that we could find someone like her in Massachusetts as our synagogue rabbi!

My husband and I can’t say enough good things about Rabbi Miriam.
From the first day we met with her at her house, she was so warm and inviting, and wanted to make sure she could make our day very personalized. We had an interfaith wedding, and she was so open, and helpful in bringing it all together, and was happy to work alongside the Hindu Priest. She spoke with us several times before the wedding and was very organized in going over the ceremony, and making sure every thing was how we wanted it.
She is such a wonderful Rabbi and truly made our ceremony so personal and touching. We got many compliments from our friends and family on how beautiful the ceremony was. We are so grateful for Rabbi Miriam.

I’ve taken way too long in getting around to writing this review. My husband and I are coming up on our third anniversary, and I was just reflecting on how great our wedding was, so I thought I’d let the Unilocaliverse know that Rabbi Miriam was a wonderful officiant.
My husband and I are both basically atheist/​agnostic (but he’s culturally Jewish and I’m philosophically Buddhist). Initially, we thought we would go with some sort of completely non-​religious humanist officiant, but my husband’s mom was adamant that we had to be married by a rabbi. We didn’t have really strong feelings one way or the other so we found Rabbi Miriam. And boy were we glad we did. As another reviewer said, it was apparent that Rabbi Miriam has a deep love for Judaism but she is also very appreciative of other traditions and beliefs. Since my husband and I consider marriage an equal partnership, we wanted to take out certain traditional overtones of the husband «acquiring» the bride, etc. Rabbi Miriam had good ideas on how to make the ceremony reflect our understanding of marriage.
Overall, she was very responsive to our concerns and was able to shape a ceremony that spoke both to tradition and to our personal beliefs.

We chose to have Rabbi Miriam officiate our ceremony last June in Sonoma. From our first phone call to our third visit, Rabbi Miriam was exactly the officiant we were searching for! She got to know us as a couple and we felt like she was not just the typical «rent-​a-​rabbi» we had interviewed before her. She provided us with a Jewish Wedding book that we read before our first visit so that we could discuss the different traditions and their meanings. She helped us understand Jewish traditions that neither one of us were familiar with and built a ceremony that was exactly what we wanted.
She has a great personality — witty, smart, and funny. She is extremely easy to speak and get along with.
She showed up to our ceremony on time. She was able to roll with the punches (our mike didn’t work), and lead us in a beautiful ceremony. We were extremely happy with her service and recommend her highly.

We can’t say enough good about Rabbi Miriam. She was an insanely great officiant for our wedding in Monterey, CA. She met with us several times before the wedding and got to know us so that she could craft the perfect ceremony. She even learned a song we liked and sang it beautifully on our special day. We got so many compliments on how «us» our wedding was, and Rabbi Miriam’s attention to our personalities and beliefs contributed a lot to a day that expressed who we are and our love for each other. She is very progressive and caring and will not try to impose anything on you. We strongly recommend her for your wedding!

Rabbi Miriam was the perfect fit for our inter-​faith wedding. She was very personable and an all around gem to work with. My husband is Jewish and I am not. I never realized how hard it would be to find a Rabbi that was willing to officiate an interfaith couple, it was. We were very thankful to have found Rabbi Mariam.
I was a little nervous going into our first meeting, being the non-​Jewish one in our relationship. We met at her home and she immediately put me at ease. She has a wonderful personality and had a genuine interest in getting to know us. We discussed what kind of wedding we wanted and she did an amazing job of tailoring the ceremony to fit us, as a couple.
She sang through the ceremony and also spoke English. We enjoyed it very much. We are now happily married for over a year now. Thanks Rabbi Miriam for helping to make our special day the best day of our lives

This review is long overdue, but I hope it gets its sparkling point across!
Our wedding date was September 4, 2011, and we approached Rabbi Miriam after my wife had heard her at various services at Rhoda Goldman Plaza in San Francisco. Rabbi Miriam began meeting with us at her home in March of 2011, and twice more before our wedding ceremony. Not being Jewish myself, I was a bit nervous about the possibility of heavy religious overtones in our ceremony, but Rabbi Miriam was so accommodating. Rabbi Miriam was able to let our vision for our wedding roam freely, changing and manipulating wording to fit our own ideology. Rabbi Miriam could have easily gotten frustrated by some of the semantics that I was trying to push across, but instead, she was very understanding and wanted so much to craft the ceremony that my wife and I had in mind.
We had a great experience with Rabbi Miriam, and would recommend her to anyone who is in need of a rabbi for anything!

The amount of praise and compliments we received on how beautiful and unique our wedding ceremony was are too numerous to count. Rabbi Miriam really encouraged us to craft and develop a ceremony that reflected our individuality and spirituality. I am Korean-​American Buddhist and my husband is Jewish and while initally I wanted to keep the ceremony as non-​religious as possible, Rabbi Miriam encouraged us to express our individuality in the ceremony. I hadn’t realized how special and unique it was until the day of the wedding. It came together so perfectly and we’ve heard from so many people how much they enjoyed the integration of the Jewish and Korean and Buddhist elements and it was so well-​balanced and interwoven. It may sound like it would’ve been chaotic, but it was done so well, it flowed seamlessly. Rabbi’s efforts and urging us to making this a true reflection of our individual backgrounds really was so insightful and meaningful.

When we met Rabbi Miriam, we knew immediately that we wanted her as our officiant. We liked her progressive approach to Judaism and the thought and care she gave during the planning of our service. The non-​Jewish side of my family mentioned afterward they appreciated that Miriam explained the various traditions of the ceremony. And, while she takes her work seriously, we also liked that she displayed a great (and much needed) sense of humor during the Ketubah signing and the actual service.

We had a wonderful experience with Rabbi Miriam. We had looked at a spectrum of synagogues, with various attitudes towards interfaith marriages. Then we found Rabbi Miriam. She was the only rabbi we met who showed both a deep love of Judaism and an appreciation for the values and ideals of my wife’s family’s non-​Jewish background. She really wanted to know who each of us were, and the traditions in both of our lives that had shaped us. Along the way she gave my wife a view of Judaism that was accessible and personally meaningful.
Over the course of several meetings we carefully worked on the ceremony. Rabbi Miriam talked us through the many choices we had around wording, and made helpful suggestions. Although her approach wasn’t traditional it was clear that she was well versed in halacha, and her recommendations reflected an understanding of the the original intent and spirit of each part of the ceremony. She turned what could have been an angst-​ridden process into a journey of discovery for us.
At the ceremony Rabbi Miriam made both families feel totally comfortable and included. Her genuine warmth shone. I feel fortunate that we were able to find a rabbi who took the time to get to know us, answered all of our questions, paid meticulous attention to detail, and showed genuine care to us and our families.

We highly recommend Miriam Senturia for your wedding. We are two lesbians who married when it was still legal. Miriam is warm, understanding, feminist, well-​organized, and politically astute. She is very easy to work with and very understanding. She met with us before the ceremony and helped us write up our thoughts — this was very hard for us, because even though we had been together for many years, we didn’t feel all that comfortable discussing our emotions. Miriam also suggested that we include our young daughter in the ceremony. Our daughter glowed at the ceremony; she felt so special. We picked a song, which she sang for us. It was such a meaningful day; I will never forget it as long as I live. Neither of us is Jewish, but we asked Miriam because she is a magical and spiritual person.

We are a Jewish lesbian couple who got married during the period when it was legal. As we are not particularly religious, we wanted a ceremony that would incorporate a religeous aspect and also note the significance of a same sex couple being able to legally marry. We did not know any Rabbis and felt extremely lucky to find Rabbi Miriam. She met with us both in person and by phone numerous times to plan a wedding that would be special for us.
We were a little nervous as the day approached, but the ceremony was more wonderful that we could have hoped for. We had been together 18 years and Rabbi Miriam used that to convey how meaningful and important that day was to us. At points during the ceremony we cried as Rabbi Miriam helped us realize a long-​time dream was coming true. At others we laughed as she talked about us as if she had known us for many years. She also sang a song that was special to us so beautifully.
Some of our family is quite religeous and others are not. Many of our guests were not Jewish. But the comments we received from our family and friends were amazing. Everyone thought we had a beautiful ceremony and Rabbi Miriam made it so. We cannot thank her enough.

Beyond the genuine care, enthusiasm and authenticity that was always present while planning and performing our wedding ceremony, two things stick out about our experience with Rabbi Miriam. First, she worked very hard with us to meticulously design our ceremony to match what was important and meaningful. This meant having a few conversations to really get to know our background and wishes — something that we took for granted until we had met a few Rabbis before Miriam who just wanted to give us a «menu» of ceremony options. For us, we were more interested in the Jewish traditions than the standard prayers and text, and Rabbi Miriam had great ideas to make the traditions work for our sensibilities. For example, she suggested that we modify the 7 conventional blessings into a chance for 7 friends/​family members to come up and give their blessings for us.
Secondly, her experience helped us consider our choices and avoid pitfalls on the day of the ceremony. While we were deciding on how to include a reading of the Kaddish, she helped us consider when and where we should perform it in order to keep the day flowing and our guests happy. Since we didn’t have a planner to maintain the logistics, It was nice to trust Rabbi Miriam that she could take on the extra duty of gently directing the flow.
I feel lucky that we found Rabbi Miriam and were able to have a perfect ceremony.

Rabbi Senturia organized and led the memorial service for my sister, who died unexpectedly. She helped us and our entire family to recognize and memorialize my sister, in the ways that worked for us. The service included ritual, songs, poetry, and (of course), food to follow.
We would highly recommend Rabbi Senturia to anyone who wants a personalized and Jewish ritual of any kind.

Rabbi Miriam performed my Jewish wedding ceremony.
I really have mixed feelings about her. Everything she did for us was really great, except for one thing, but the one thing has really colored my feelings about her professionalism and services.
Rabbi Miriam let me argue her price way, way down. She was also the only Rabbi willing to do a wedding with only a few months notice. Most other rabbis want to have at least 6 months lead time. I really appreciate her willingness to accommodate our budget and time frame. She helped us design a beautiful ceremony that really touched us and our families and was both religious and also accessible to my husband’s family, who are not Jewish. She has a beautiful singing voice and we loved the addition of her singing to our ceremony.
Ok. The one thing: When we first met she knew I had yet to purchase a Ketubah (Jewish marriage contract). I asked her for advice on where to get one, and she gave me some ideas. She didn’t say anything about what kind of Ketubah I should get. I purchased one online that was inexpensive but attractive. It arrived a few days before our ceremony, at which point I showed it to Rabbi Miriam. She refused to sign it! It was the day before my wedding ceremony and she was refusing to sign the document I had paid money for because she felt the wording was sexist and didn’t represent our marriage EVEN though I was fine with the language. I was incredibly upset. She admitted that she should have said something before, but she still refused to sign it. We ended up printing something out on the computer that she was happier with, but it doesn’t look like a Ketubah and we will probably never frame it. I had wanted to have the Ketubah framed as a keepsake, but now we won’t have that.
Up until the day before my wedding, she would have gotten 5 stars. She did a great job on everything else, but I’m just so mad about the Ketubah thing that I can’t give her 5 stars.
My family really loved her and so did my husband’s. They were suggesting we have her back to do our baby naming ceremonies. I was joking with my husband that if we did that she’d get there, look at the baby and say, «Oh, gee… I don’t think I feel comfortable naming this baby. I don’t think this baby really represents the truth and beauty of your marriage…»
So, Rabbi Miriam is great. By all means hire her. But, make absolutely sure that you don’t order a Ketubah before asking her about language.