Amy Dow in the news

Curiosity Drives Woman to Explore, Preserve and Counsel
By Liz Balmaseda / Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Amy Dow is a great believer in documenting life. She's organized and detail-minded, traits reflected in the many scrapbook pages she's filled with photos and mementos of her family and community milestones.

Memories, she finds, are more enjoyable when they are documented, beautifully photographed and punctuated in color. Perhaps it's the student in her that drives her to archive.

The 47-year-old western West Palm Beach mother not only has a law degree, but she also is back in school, working toward a master's degree. She wants to work as a children's mental health counselor.

She has also approached her Jewish faith with the same studious curiosity. Although she had no religious education growing up and could not read Hebrew, she set out to learn the phonetics of the language and the basic prayers and blessings of her faith.

"When I started becoming more involved in my Judaism, I just felt there needed to be a way to make the (Hebrew) blessings easier to learn," says Dow, who lives in Boca Raton, Florida with her husband and son.

Dow approached the task like a student: She made flash cards of sorts. She researched the basic prayers (including blessings for waking, bedtime, mealtime, Shabbat and Chanukah).

She enlisted the help of Rabbi Menachem Muskal of Wellington to provide the religious context and language. Their collaboration resulted in a full set of long, laminated cards printed with at-a-glance information, Hebrew prayers and transliterations. (She now sells these cards online at yourjewishjourney.com.)

"I suspected there were a lot of people like me who did not read Hebrew, but wanted to say these blessings at home," she said.

Dow says her card journey has brought her closer to her faith. "I wanted to participate," she said. "I wanted to pray more easily."

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