Writing Jewish, Writing Funny
2025-07-22 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-07-29 12:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom
Tuesdays, July 8, 15, 22 & 29, 2025
12-1:30 p.m. EDT
$180

Join us for an engaging adventure with Emmy-winning TV writer and LMU film school professor Rob Kutner as we delve into how Jews have utilized humor to navigate their challenging history. Together, we will explore various “tricks of the trade” to spread joy to ourselves and others during these tough times.
Kutner will share examples of how humor has played a crucial role in overcoming adversity throughout history, showcasing how these techniques can be applied to contemporary challenges.
Over the course of four sessions, participants will have the opportunity to:

Pitch their creative ideas
Engage in comedic writing exercises
Receive constructive feedback from both the instructor and fellow participants
Participate in guided revision sessions

No prior writing or comedy experience is necessary; this enjoyable and interactive experience is crafted for everyone!
All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Rob Kutner has won 5 Emmys, a Peabody, a TCA, and a Grammy writing for such shows as TBS’ “CONAN” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and HBO’s “Dennis Miller Live.” He has published humor pieces for the New York Times, Esquire, Huffington Post, McSweeney’s, and the Weekly Forward. He is also the author of the sci-fi humor books Apocalypse How: Turn the End Times into the Best of Times! , The Future According to Me, the kids’ graphic novel Snot Goblins & Other Tasteless Tales, and the new comedic Jewish history book, The Jews: 5,000 Years and Counting.

Finding Shekhinah
2025-07-23 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-07-30 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
Wednesdays, July 9, 16, 23 & 30, 2025
12-1:30 p.m. EDT
$180

What and where is the Shekhinah, the divine presence, how can we find Her in our world and our lives, hear Her voice, feel Her within and around us?

Each of our four meetings will explore these questions by considering one of the Shekhinah’s many incarnations in Jewish tradition through text study, discussion, and creative exercises (sharing will be optional) intended to help us examine our ideas about and experiences of divinity, and imaginatively trying out different relations to divine presence.

All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Joy Ladin has published ten books of poetry, including her new collection, Shekhinah Speaks (Selva Oscura Press); The Book of Anna, winner of the National Jewish Book Award; and Transmigration, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. She is also the author of a memoir of gender transition, Through the Door of Life, which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and the Triangle Award. Ladin has received fellowships and scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies Research, among other honors. A nationally recognized speaker on transgender issues, she convenes an online conversation series, “Containing Multitudes,” which is available at JewishLive.org/multitudes. Her writing is available at joyladin.com.

Deep Body Poetry
2025-07-24 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-07-31 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
Thursdays, July 10, 17, 24 & 31, 2025
12-1:30 p.m. EDT
$180

If the body was given ultimate agency what would it say? What stories would it tell?

Poetry universalizes the human experience, the experience of having a body—a body that holds our psychic experience even more deeply and better than our minds do. Mining the poetry of the body happens through the bravery of those who have written these poems. Deep body poetry is the poetry of the disabled body, the queer & trans body and the menstruating body. It’s the poetry where no metaphor, simile or nuance stands between the reader and the subject; where the body is open and ready to speak. Join us as we read the lyric emotional truths of other poets, allowing our minds and hearts to awaken to begin to ask our body to reveal its secrets, and from there to generate creative expression,

All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Rachel Neve-Midbar is a poet and essayist. Her first full-length poetry collection, Salaam of Birds, was chosen by Dorothy Barresi for the Patricia Bibby First Book Prize and was published by Tebot Bach in January 2020. She is also the author of the 2014 chapbook, What the Light Reveals. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies. A current Ph.D. candidate at the University of Southern California, Rachel is also editor of Stained: An Anthology of Writing about Menstruation for the AuntFlo2020 Project. More at rachelnevemidbar.com.

Elul Journey Towards Yizkor
2025-08-13 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-08-20 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-08-27 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-09-03 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
Wednesdays, August 13, 20 & 27 and September 3, 2025
12-1:30 p.m. EDT
$180

As we welcome the month of Elul, our thoughts naturally shift towards spiritual introspection. This year, many of us carry not only our personal grief but also the collective sorrows of the world.

Elul offers us the opportunity to explore the traditions surrounding the Mourner’s Kaddish and the Yizkor service. Join liturgist Trisha Arlin to a meaningful journey that includes conversation, meditation, and creative writing. Together, we will delve into various aspects of the Kaddish, connecting it to your personal grief journey and the wider state of the world. For those attending the Yizkor service, this session will enhance your experience and participation.

All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Trisha Arlin is a liturgist, writer, performer, and student of prayer in Brooklyn, NY. She has served as a liturgist, scholar, and artist-in-residence and taught for venues including the National Havurah Committee’s Summer Institute, Ritualwell, Haggadot.com, and for synagogues around the country. She is a builder of Bayit’s Liturgical Arts project. Trisha received a BA in Theater from Antioch College in 1975 and an MFA in Film (Screenwriting) in 1997 from Columbia University. In 2009/2010, Trisha was an Arts Fellow at the Drisha Institute. In 2011, she graduated from the sixth cohort of the Davennen Leadership Training Institute (DLTI). Trisha’s liturgy has been used in services, for ritual occasions, and at venues of many denominations nationwide. She is the author of Place Yourself: Words of Poetry and Intention (a collection of liturgy and kavannot). Her work has appeared in a variety of journals, siddurim, and collections of liturgy and can be found online at TrishaArlin.com.

Everyday Rituals: Jewish Life as the Framework for Playwriting
2025-10-29 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-11-05 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-11-12 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-11-19 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
Wednesdays, Oct 29, 2025 and November 5, 12 & 19, 2025
12-1:30 p.m. EST
$180

What moments from the rituals of your life could inspire a new play? What makes a play a Jewish play and how can we weave Jewish ritual and values into what’s on the page? Where to start? How to go deeper?

By taking inspiration from both religious rituals and the commonalities of life Jewish families hold dear, award-winning playwright Jennifer Maisel will guide you through writing exercises that will uncover new facets to your characters and more complex elements of your story. You can be starting from scratch or working on an already existing piece. But come ready to stretch your imagination, explore your spirit, and discover how ritual can transform your writing. Show up with pen, paper, and the willingness to be inspired.

This Immersion is a special partnership with the Jewish Plays Project.

All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.
Jennifer Maisel is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter whose work has been produced off-Broadway, nationally and internationally. Her plays include EIGHT NIGHTS, OUT OF ORBIT, MATCH. PROVENANCE, THERE OR HERE, YELLOWWALLPAPER 2.0 2020 and @thespeedofJake and have been workshopped and honored by the Sundance Theatre Lab, the Ojai Playwrights Conference, The Kennedy Center, the Ovation Awards, the Woodward/Newman Award, the Asolo Theatre and the PEN West Literary Awards. She also writes for film and television; the screenplay adaptation of her THE LAST SEDER is in pre-production with Rosalind Productions. PROVENANCE was the winner of the 2025 Jewish Plays Project contest.

Seeding Family-based Poems with Golems, Dybukks and Shpilkas
2025-10-30 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-11-06 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-11-13 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-11-20 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
Thursdays, October 30 and November 6, 13, & 20, 2025
12-1:30 p.m. ET
$180

What Inspires Your Poetry?

In Jewish tradition, stories and symbols shimmer with possibility—golems who guard and protect, dybbuks who haunt and unsettle, wise sayings passed down in mameloshen (Yiddish and other beloved tongues). These mythic images and words have traveled through generations, carrying echoes of our history, humor, and heart.

In this Immersion with poet Susan Comninos, we’ll step into this rich imaginative landscape, exploring how folklore, family stories, and cultural memory can awaken new inspiration for your writing. Susan will guide us in weaving together personal history and timeless myth, crafting poems that honor our creative inheritance while speaking in our own, present-day voices. Come to reflect, to write, and to join others in a circle of Jewish creativity—where the past and present meet on the page

All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Susan Comninos is a widely published writer and author of a recent book of poems, “Out of Nowhere” (Stephen F. Austin Univ. Press/Texas A&M, 2022). Her individual poems, often on Jewish themes, have appeared in the Harvard Review Online, Rattle, The Common, Prairie Schooner and North American Review, among others. She’s taught writing to undergraduates at Siena College, The College of St. Rose and SUNY Albany, as well as to adults in the community. She is currently at work on a second collection of poems, called “Wild Joy of Receiving” and is the poetry editor for Judith. She lives in upstate New York.

Writing in Conversation with Kohelet
2025-11-04 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-11-11 12:00 - 13:30, 2025-11-18 12:00 - 13:30
Tuesdays, November 4, 11 & 18, 2025
12:00-1:30 p.m.
$154

The Book of Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) is a poetic, puzzling, and deeply human text—full of contradictions, timeless wisdom, and evocative imagery. In this 3-part generative writing series, you’ll be invited to slow down, listen closely, and let Kohelet’s searching questions about purpose, joy, mortality, and meaning spark your own reflections.
Each session will offer:

Guided exploration of selected passages from Kohelet that open up new ways of thinking about life’s biggest questions.
Creative prompts to help you respond in your own voice—through poetry, memoir, fiction, or spiritual writing.
A supportive space to share and connect with others who are also writing their way into deeper wisdom.

By the end of the series, you’ll leave with fresh writing, new insights into this mysterious text, and a sense of connection to an ancient tradition that still speaks to the heart. Come ready to read, reflect, and create. All levels of writing experience are warmly welcomed.

This session will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience

Amy Gottlieb is a novelist and poet. Her debut novel, The Beautiful Possible, was a finalist for the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, the Harold Ribalow Prize, and a National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction. Her poetry has appeared in On Being, Ilanot Review, Storyscape, SWWIM, Quartet Journal, Poetica, Paper Brigade, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a fellowship from the Civita Institute and five individual awards from the Bronx Council on the Arts.

Rekindling Light and Joy Through Writing & Art
2025-12-04 13:00 - 14:30, 2025-12-11 13:00 - 14:30, 2025-12-18 13:00 - 14:30 | Zoom
Thursdays, December 4, 11 & 18, 2025
1-2:30 p.m. EST
$154

Remember: Joy is not merely incidental to your spiritual quest. It is vital. – Reb Nachman of Breslov

In times of personal and collective darkness, how do you stay inspired and revive your creative spirit?

You don’t have to do it alone.
In this workshop, poet and painter Cathleen Cohen and essayist and memoirist Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer will guide you through Jewish texts, poetry, and creative exercises. Together, you’ll explore ways to rediscover joy and rekindle your creative passion in honor of Hanukkah, so that you can step into Hanukkah and the winter season with a renewed sense of inner light.
Whether you’re just beginning your creative journey or you’ve been writing or making art for years, this workshop invites you to discover fresh techniques and pathways that will deepen your connections and nurture joy as a spiritual practice.

All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Cathleen Cohen was the 2019 Poet Laureate of Montgomery County, PA. A painter and teacher, she founded the We the Poets program at ArtWell, an arts education non-profit in Philadelphia. Her poems appear in journals such as Apiary, Baltimore Review, Cagibi, East Coast Ink, 6ix, North of Oxford, One Art, Passager, Philadelphia Stories, Rockvale Review and Rogue Agent. Camera Obscura (chapbook, Moonstone Press), appeared in 2017 and Etching the Ghost (Atmosphere Press) in 2021. She received the Interfaith Relations Award from the Montgomery County PA Human Rights Commission and the Public Service Award from National Association of Poetry Therapy. Her paintings are on view at Cerulean Arts Gallery (ceruleanarts.com).

Gabrielle Ariella Kaplan-Mayer is Ritualwell’s Director of Virtual Content and Programs. She is an author and educator whose work focuses on spirituality, creativity and disability. Her personal essays have been featured in Tablet, Shondaland, NBCThink, Wisdom Daily, WHYY and many other publications and she has published several nonfiction books as well as plays for children. Gabrielle is currently working on a memoir about the power of intuition and ongoing conversations with her ancestors. She writes a Substack newsletter called “Journey With The Seasons,” a weekly practice of meditative reading with creative self-expression prompts.
Gabrielle holds a BFA in theater and creative writing from Emerson College and an MA in Jewish Studies from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.

Lifting the Threads: Writing Past and Present
2026-02-17 12:00 - 13:30, 2026-02-24 12:00 - 13:30, 2026-03-03 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
Tuesday, Feb 17 & 24 and March 3, 2026
12-1:30 p.m.
$154

As storytellers, how do we balance our present lived experience with the past that shapes it? In Jewish tradition, memory and narrative carry profound weight—from the retelling of ancestral journeys in the Torah to the intimate stories passed through our families. In this 3-week workshop, we’ll explore strategies for seamlessly integrating backstory, experimenting with time shifts to deepen meaning rather than interrupt narrative flow. Through readings, discussion, and writing prompts, we will move fluidly between temporal layers—the “forward momentum” of the lived story and the “backwards glance” demanded by memory.

By the end of the workshop, you will produce a short memoir piece that demonstrates fluid interplay between present and past—using backstory as a source of resonance, not digression, and honoring the threads of memory that connect us to our histories and communities.

All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Megan Vered writes about family, friendship, and the dazzle of daily life. Megan lives in Marin County, where she facilitates local, international, and Jewish-themed writing groups. Her essays and interviews have appeared in HuffPost, Kveller, The Jewish Writing Project, High Country News, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the Writer’s Chronicle, among others. Megan holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and chairs the board of Heyday Books. Learn more about her work at www.meganvered.com

Creative Containers: Writing With Poetic Forms
2026-04-16 12:30 - 13:30 | Zoom
April 16, 23 & 30 and May 7, 2026
12-1:30 p.m. ET
$180

Creative containers — ranging from sonnets and sonnenizios, to pantoums and triolets — can offer structure while also inviting depth, complexity, and even surprise into your writing! In this series, poet and author Susan Comninos will guide participants through the rich possibilities of using poetic forms as tools for cohesion and focus, as well as exploration, expression, and musicality. Taking as our springboards poems by Jewish voices or on Jewish themes (including work by Rochelle Nameroff, Jaqueline Osherow, Emma Lazarus and Robert Morgan), we’ll play with prompts and shared writing time to help you develop your own poetic voice within the shape of a received form.
In each session we’ll:

Learn techniques of specific forms and how they shape content and create tone;
Read and discuss examples that illuminate craft and purpose;
Practice generative prompts tailored to the form of the day; and
Share work in a supportive environment with thoughtful feedback.

This workshop is open to writers of all levels — from beginners curious about form to experienced writers looking to stretch their practice!
This session will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.
Susan Comninos is the author of a recent book of poems, “Out of Nowhere” (SFA Press/Texas A&M, 2022). Her individual poems have appeared in the Harvard Review Online, Rattle, The Common, Prairie Schooner and North American Review, among others. She’s taught writing to undergraduates at Siena College, The College of St. Rose, and SUNY Albany, as well as adults in the community. At present, she serves as poetry editor of Judith magazine and is at work on a second collection of poems, “Wild Joy of Receiving.” The title poem, published by The Baltimore Review, is forthcoming this spring in the anthology “The Color Wheel” (Terrapin Books, 2026).

Writing Memoir from Photos
2026-05-04 13:00 - 14:30 | Zoom
Mondays, May 4, 11 & 18, 2026
1-2:30 p.m.
$154

Photographs are powerful vessels of memory—small artifacts that live in albums, frames, and on our phones, holding moments of joy, longing, love, and loss.
In this three-week memoir writing workshop, led by Lisa Grunberger, we will explore how photos can serve as meaningful starting points for writing about the past. Together, we’ll consider how images invite stories forward, helping us approach both cherished memories and more difficult ones with care.
Alongside our own writing, we will engage with reflections on photography from writers such as Susan Sontag and John Berger. Through guided prompts and gentle exercises, participants will use personal photographs to generate new creative work, including short “micro-memoirs” that can stand alone or grow into longer pieces.
Each session will include time for sharing, discussion, and supportive feedback. Working with photos can be a tender, accessible way to honor our experiences and deepen the stories we carry.
All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.
Poetry Pushcart nominee and Temple University English Professor Lisa Grunberger is a first-generation American writer. Her award-winning poetry book For the Future of Girls is a lyrical reflection on life as a woman, a mother, and a daughter of Holocaust survivors. It was nominated for an Eric Hoffer Independent Press award. She’s the author of Yiddish Yoga: Ruthie’s Adventures in Love, Loss and the Lotus Position (Harper Collins); Her poems appear in Breaking the Glass: A Contemporary Jewish Poetry Anthology (The Laurel Review, 2023). A widely published writer, her work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The Southern Review, The Paterson Literary Review, Mudfish, Bridges, Of the Book Press, The Jewish Literary Journal, and Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture and Heritage (ELJ Editions), Crab Orchard Review, Mom Egg Review, The Baffler. She’s been translated into Slovenian, Russian, Spanish, Yiddish.

ALMOST PREGNANT, her play about infertility and motherhood, is published by Next Stage Press; Her play, Alexa Talks to Rebecca won the Audience Choice Award at the Squeaky Bicycle Theatre. She’s working on a memoir called Me and My Makers: A Memoir of Adoption, Genes and Love.

Shekhinah: A Creative Tradition
2026-05-06 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
Wednesdays, May 6, 13, 20 & 27, 2026
12-1:30 p.m. EST
$180

One of poetry’s oldest and most powerful purposes is to make divine presence perceptible through language. In this series led by poet Joy Ladin, we will explore the rich intersections between poetry, Jewish tradition, and the Shekhinah: Judaism’s name for a form of God’s presence that dwells within human life—within time, space, relationship, community, and even suffering.

Unlike other understandings of divine presence that arise through prophecy or revelation, the Shekhinah emerged through the imaginative and spiritual work of the rabbis. The word comes from a biblical root meaning “to dwell,” yet the Shekhinah does not appear in the Torah. Instead, it was developed in response to human longing and need—a way of naming the sacred as something close, intimate, and accompanying.

Together, we will read early rabbinic texts alongside later interpretations, including medieval mystical writings and contemporary feminist Jewish poetry that reimagines the Shekhinah as a more explicitly female-identified presence.

Through discussion and gentle writing exercises, participants will experiment with language as a way to search for, question, imagine, and respond to the Shekhinah—or however we understand presence beyond the human. This series offers space for reflection, creativity, and spiritual exploration through the art of poetry.

All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Joy Ladin has published ten books of poetry, including her new collection, Shekhinah Speaks (Selva Oscura Press); The Book of Anna, winner of the National Jewish Book Award; and Transmigration, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. She is also the author of a memoir of gender transition, Through the Door of Life, which was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and the Triangle Award. Ladin has received fellowships and scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies Research, among other honors. A nationally recognized speaker on transgender issues, she convenes an online conversation series, “Containing Multitudes,” which is available at JewishLive.org/multitudes. Her writing is available at joyladin.wordpress.com.
