As the first full-time female rabbi in Poland, Tanya Segal has creatively transformed Jewish life in the historic city of Krakow through her blending of Jewish learning and performance art. Segal began her career as an actress in the Moscow Jewish Musical Theater. After moving to Israel in 1990, she studied Jewish mysticism at Tel Aviv University and entered rabbinical school at the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. In 2006, a year before her ordination, HUC–JIR performed Segal’s play And Her Name was Heather, a fusion of the Book of Ruth with the story of a modern American convert. In 2007 Segal visited Krakow for the first time and recognized that its Jewish population (a fraction of what it had been before the Holocaust) needed leadership that could provide new models for engagement. She helped establish a progressive synagogue, Beit Krakow, in 2009, offering prayer services and lectures on Jewish history and contemporary Jewish art. She also created the Midrash Lab, which uses music, dance, and theater to reinterpret Jewish texts. In 2012 Segal helped officiate the community’s first bat mitzvah ceremony for a local girl. Since 2019, she has also served as a rabbi in Ostrava, Czech Republic.