Devorah Kigel: Growing Through Challenges

While dating can be fun, exciting and filled with giddy butterflies, it’s just as often frequented by overthinking, anxiety and major nausea-inducing insecurity. When going through the process, it’s essential to have an objective party to talk things through with. Enter Devorah Kigel.

Devorah is a dating coach and speaker from Passaic, New Jersey, who has made it her mission to ease that process for women. She’s guided close to 150 couples to the chuppah, going on to help them remain happily married afterward. “Once you get married, that’s when the work begins,” she says.

And that’s just one piece. This wife and mother of four frequently speaks at high schools, colleges and women’s events, discussing topics of interest to women, such as tzniut (modesty), hair covering, parenting and shalom bayit (peace in the home). Her personal passions and struggles permeate her talks; she likes to speak from true experience.

Her Own Journey

Devorah became more deeply connected to her Jewish roots later in life, when she started working in Manhattan after grad school. A baalat teshuvah (returnee to Judaism), she has been observant for 25 years and married to her husband for nearly 22 of them. The two are now a powerhouse couple at Emet, a kiruv (outreach) organization based in Queens. The family is known for hosting packed Shabbat meals in their home, for personally mentoring their many students and for teaching classes.

Students are drawn to the Kigels as if one of Devorah’s signature mini carrot muffins was dangling in front of them. But, like many great stories, what seems like an obvious match on the outside—the Kigels and kiruv—actually took a bit of maneuvering and some Divine Intervention to come to fruition.

The Kigels began their married life on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Devorah’s husband, Reuven, was working on Wall Street, while she worked in the home, raising her baby with a second on the way. As someone constantly focused on growth, she looked around for Torah classes. While there were offerings, there was maybe only one given by a woman.

“Women were not teaching at the majority of the outreach organizations I looked at, and certainly from my background, I just felt like it was such a shame,” she explains. “But one day I started thinking—I believe it was the Lubavitcher Rebbe who said, ‘When you see something that needs perfecting, it’s Hashem telling you that you need to be a part of the perfecting process.’”

Divine Providence worked unbelievably fast after that. A few days after Devorah had that thought, she got a call from Jodi Samuels and Steve Eisenberg, two individuals she knew from the Upper West Side who were also the founders of the Jewish International Connection of New York (JICNY), a local kiruv organization for young Jewish professionals, asking her to teach a Torah class to women.

“At first I was shocked. I couldn’t believe they wanted me to teach; I had been frum (religiously observant) for five minutes,” she says, laughing. “But also, it was hard not to get the message. I had been thinking about doing this literally days before. So, I said, ‘Okay Hashem, if this is what You have in mind, then let’s do it.’”

She decided to put together a series on hot-button women’s issues in Judaism, a passion point for her. This turned into a set of eight classes on dating, marriage, prayer, the mechitza (the dividing barrier between men and women at synagogues) and a woman’s role in Judaism, to name a few. The planning took time, persistence and hard work. “I spent about 15-20 hours on each class,” she says. “It took a very, very long time.” But it paid off—Devorah taught the series once a year at JICNY for several years thereafter and it jumpstarted her career as a speaker and educator.

The Turning Point

“People would tell my husband all the time that he would be such a great kiruv rabbi,” Devorah says. “We thought it was ridiculous, though, because he had a lucrative Wall Street trading job and kiruv rabbis were a dime a dozen. We decided to put our energy into my teaching instead, since there were far fewer female speakers.”

However, about a month after the Kigels moved into a new apartment on the Upper West Side, Rabbi Kigel’s Wall Street job essentially disappeared. He needed to pivot and look for something new. He began trying out other industries, like commercial real estate and mortgages, but nothing took off. “Hashem turned the spigot of parnassa (income) firmly to the off position for about five years,” Devorah shares.

About a year and a half after Reuven left Wall Street, the Kigels exhausted their savings. They needed to move out of pricey Manhattan and were looking toward Passaic, a growing frum community in New Jersey. “We left New York City kicking and screaming,” Devorah says. “It was a painful time.”

The Kigels were an Upper West Side staple, often hosting Shabbat meals there, and Devorah was nervous no one would come to the suburbs. Thankfully, one of her mentors gave her some loving—but firm—reassurance: “Devorah,” she said, “do you think Hashem is firing you? He can do anything. You don’t think He can bring Shabbat guests to New Jersey?”

Devorah looks back at her erroneous thinking with humor. “The joke is that now, at least before coronavirus hit, we were having between 10 and 60 guests every Shabbat,” she says.

Shortly after the Kigels got to Passaic, her husband joined the local kollel. Learning there for a year and a half while working gave him more tools to transition to a rabbinic job. Then, through one of their Shabbat guests, he heard about a position with Emet, a Jewish outreach organization.