Meet Marla Rottenstreich    

I trained for, and excelled at, competitive dancing and gymnastics. I won medals and traveled the world with dance troupes. At the peak of my career I was the only white girl —  forget Jewish! — to work as a professional hip-hop dancer.

Somewhere along the way I got into progressive causes, saving the environment, yoga, meditation — all the New Age stuff. I was living at an ashram in India when I attended an environmentalist conference. With my long robes and knee-length dreadlocks, I didn’t think I looked particularly Jewish, but the Chabad rabbi approached and asked if I was.

“You don’t belong here,” he told me very bluntly. “You belong in Israel.”

I wasn’t offended. I was a searching soul and welcomed anything the universe wanted to teach me.