Hi! I’m Miriam Racquel  (Meryl is my English nickname), and I started this site as a means to share with you what an exciting time we are living in and how we can tap into the revealed divine light of this time, create more of it, and bring the world to its full G-dly completion.

I was raised as a secular Jew in a beautiful suburb of New York, about 50 minutes outside Manhattan. Though my Czechoslovakian-born grandmother kept the tradition of lighting sabbath candles Friday night and fasting on Yom Kippur, I did not follow in her footsteps. I was a very proud liberal, feminist atheist who attended Grinnell College and settled in Berkeley, California upon graduating.

One day, as I sat in my funky Berkeley rented home, I received a letter from a pseudo-boyfriend.  I’m referring to him as a pseudo-boyfriend because we had been out of touch for several months while he studied abroad in Europe. The letter was 13 pages long and David proceeded to share with me some “interesting” things he was doing. Turned out, he was in Israel and had started to practice Orthodox Judaism. Now this seemed pretty strange to me considering the fact that the suburb in which I grew up in was 2 minutes away from a highly populated Orthodox Jewish community and I had never heard of a secular Jew, which David had been, crossing over into Orthodoxy. As far as I knew, Orthodox Jews had no TVs and little contact with the “real “ world, so I was rightfully suspicious of what he had gotten himself into. When I checked with a Rabbi in the Berkeley area, I was told that David was in a cult, and I was advised to hop on a plane to Israel and get him out. As a faithful pseudo-girlfriend, that is exactly what I did.

Though I went to Israel armed with a backpack teeming with feminist and anti-religious warfare — oops, I mean books — I eventually made a cautious and discerning journey into the world of Orthodox Judaism. My two-year transition into a highly conservative, G-d focused life was much slower and longer than David’s because as I mentioned earlier, I was deeply grounded in my atheist, liberal and feminist ways and deeply suspicious of the “cult” he had fallen into. To make a long story short, David and I went our own separate ways, but eventually our paths crossed again. We dated “orthodox” style and married; 22 years later, we are living according to the Lubavitch/Chabad* Chassidic tradition and raising our family with these deep spiritual values.

Saving the world, one seal at a time 🙂

So, how does this story relate to Heart Flame Living? If I trace back the thread that connects my present day Jewish Chassidic values to my liberal Grinnell/Berkeley values, I see that I was always passionate about making the world a better place. I was either volunteering at animal shelters, rehabilitating abandoned/wounded seals, or helping out at political refugee centers.  As a sensitive soul, the suffering of animals and humans touched me deeply and I always yearned to lessen their pain. When I returned back to my Jewish traditional roots, I recognized in the teachings and practices how I could play my part in alleviating suffering in the world.  The acts of keeping kosher, observing the sabbath, the daily contribution of charity, prayer and the many other spiritual/physical practices of Judaism (there are actually about 613**) was a way for me, as a Jew, to bring G-dly light into the world. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, indicated that the Infinite light is in the world now, and that the world is ready to flip the switch for the full revelation. This full revelation ends the suffering for all and brings the ultimate healing for the planet — this is what I’ve long been waiting for.

* Lubavitch/Chabad is a chassidic movement spiritually originating from the Baal Shem Tov, and physically originating from the Russian town of Lubovitch, which translates as “The City of Love”.

** 613 Mitzvos – The meaning of the word Mitzva derives from the Hebrew word meaning “connection”.  In general, these known as the G’d’s commandments to the Jewish people, as stated in the Torah.