Ritualwell

Creating New Jewish Liturgy: A Talk with Dr. Marcia Falk
2022-09-22 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom
Dr. Marcia Falk is one of the foremothers of the Jewish feminist movement and an innovator of Jewish liturgy and poetry. Join us for a special opportunity to hear her speak about her process creating new liturgy, including how and why she began the project that ultimately led to her books The Book of Blessings and The Days Between. She’ll discuss how her work evolved over time and she’ll delve into the relationship between theology and liturgy, with specific emphasis on feminist perspectives. The session will include a Q & A.
Dr. Marcia Falk is widely known in the Jewish world for her poetic re-creations of Hebrew and English liturgy from an inclusive, nonpatriarchal perspective. Her bilingual prayer book, The Book of Blessings: New Jewish Prayers for Daily Life, the Sabbath, and the New Moon Holiday, originally published in 1996 and released in a 20th-anniversary edition by the CCAR Press, is considered a classic of modern Jewish liturgy and is used today by congregations in North America, Europe, and Israel, as well as by individuals. The Book of Blessings has been praised by distinguished author Cynthia Ozick, who wrote, “Marcia Falk’s work on Hebrew blessings is as beautiful as it is innovative,” and by liturgy scholar Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, who called it “a liturgical and literary masterpiece.” Learn more at https://www.marciafalk.com/.
The session will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Ritualwell Open House – September 21st
2022-09-21 11:00 - 14:00 | Zoom
Hosted by Hila Ratzabi & Adva Chattler
Explore Ritualwell’s online learning offerings at our open house days! Enjoy a taste of our faculty’s inspiring teachings with short, 30-minute sessions. Free and open to all.
Open House sessions schedule:
11:00 a.m. EDT, Ellen Blum Barish: “Leaving a Legacy by Letter”
The letter has deep roots in Judaism. After his exile from Spain, medieval Jewish rabbi Nachmanides (the Ramban) sent a letter to his son offering his blueprint for an ethical life. We will read Ramban’s letter as well as other literary letters to get a feel for how values and beliefs have been expressed and passed along to others. You will leave with writing prompts to help you explore your core values that may find articulation via letter.

11:30 a.m. EDT – ADVOT Info session
Curious about ADVOT@Ritualwell, our year-long cohort for ritual innovators, poets, and liturgists? Hop into an info session to ask your questions and learn more about this dynamic, online, Jewish creative community!

12:00 p.m. EDT, Rachel Neve-Midbar: “Restoring the Soul: Entering the World of the Psalms”
The Torah offers us a vision of the world as it is and the world as we hope it might be. This is nowhere better exemplified than in the 150 poems written by a most imperfect man: David, King of Israel. Enter the world of this gorgeous poetry that marries our flawed world with our hopes and dreams of a world beyond our own.

1:00 p.m. EDT, Alden Solovy: “Song at the Sea: A Liturgy for the Ages”
Explore the liturgical layers of Shirat Ha-Yam, the Song at the Sea, sung in triumph by the Israelites after crossing the Red Sea. Using both text study and guided visualization, poet and liturgist Alden Solovy will guide us on our own journey to find meaning in this ancient song and to find writing prompts woven throughout the text.

2:00 p.m. EDT, Sivan Rotholz: “Why Feminist Torah Matters”
What is feminist Torah? Who writes it? Who reads it? And how does our Jewish experience open up when we re-encounter our sacred texts through a feminist lens? Join gynocentric Torah scholar and student rabbi Sivan Rotholz as we take a dip into the world of feminist Torah and discover, together, some of its treasures.

Ritualwell Open House – September 14th
2022-09-14 11:00 - 14:00 | Zoom
Hosted by Hila Ratzabi & Adva Chattler
Explore Ritualwell’s online learning offerings at our open house days! Enjoy a taste of our faculty’s inspiring teachings with short, 30-minute sessions. Free and open to all.
Open House sessions schedule:
11:00 a.m. EDT, Leslie Contreras Schwartz: “Poetry as Prayer: Writing the Personal through Invocation”
Poetry can be a conduit to exploring how our own lives connect to a sense of the Divine. We will explore how poets can examine the personal using aspects of prayer in their work. We will study poems that act as prayer or relate to prayer by Jewish writers, and take home a prompt to start our own personal prayer-poem.

11:30 a.m. EDT, Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein: “Returning to our Deepest Selves: Lessons on Teshuvah from Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook”
Teshuvah is sometimes understood as “repentance,” but a more accurate translation would be “return.” Join us to explore perhaps its most important aspect: the journey of returning to our most authentic selves. Together, we will learn and reflect upon our responses to heart-opening teachings about teshuvah from the great twentieth-century poet and mystic, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook.

12:00 p.m. EDT, Trisha Arlin: “Truth and the Talking Donkey”
What is truth telling? In parashat Balak, it’s a talking donkey (and his passenger), and these days, in shul, sometimes it can be the liturgist and the poet. We will examine the relationship between truth and prayer, and ask: What does a good talking donkey need to be their best self?

12:30 p.m. EDT, ADVOT Info session
Curious about ADVOT@Ritualwell, our year-long cohort for ritual innovators, poets, and liturgists? Hop into an info session to ask your questions and learn more about this dynamic, online, Jewish creative community!

1:00 p.m. EDT, Amy Gottlieb: “A Taste of Story Magic: Short Story / Life Story”
How can a very short story contain the magnitude of a life story? We’ll dip into a brief short story by Grace Paley, dissect its magic tricks, and talk about how time is an invisible thread running through all good fiction. At the end of the session, I’ll offer an inspiring prompt for sketching a short story / life story of your own.

2:00 p.m. EDT, Ayeola Omolara Kaplan: “Dreaming up Olam Shalem: Creating a World that is Whole”
Explore the creative relationship between Jewish spirituality and the practice of using art to build a holy society with Ayeola Omolara Kaplan, a Black, Queer, and Jewish artist. Our conversation will inspire a collaborative artwork that Ayeola will begin sketching during the session and share with participants the following week. This experience will model a playful way to engage in Jewish spirituality that you can practice whenever you need to recharge your sense of hope and possibility. The collaborative art piece will serve as a reminder of the divine world we aspire to create together.
These sessions will not be recorded.

Voices of the Divine Feminine: A Poetry Reading with Joy Ladin & Hila Ratzabi
2022-09-08 19:00 - 20:00
Hosted by Rabbi Deborah Waxman
Join us in celebrating the launch of two visionary new books of poetry. Shekhinah Speaks, by Joy Ladin, gives voices to the Divine Feminine by remixing language from the Book of Isaiah and Cosmopolitan magazine. There Are Still Woods, by Hila Ratzabi, is an urgent, prayerful book of poems responding to the climate crisis, and includes the voices of spirits, gods, and goddesses from a variety of sources. The poets will each read from their books and engage in a discussion with Rabbi Deborah Waxman on the creative process of tapping into the Divine Feminine to express the inexpressible. Audience Q&A will follow.
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.
Hila Ratzabi is the author of the poetry collection There Are Still Woods, forthcoming in September 2022 from June Road Press. She holds a BA in English/Creative Writing from Barnard College, a BA in Jewish Philosophy from the Jewish Theological Seminary (Double Degree Program, 2003), and an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College (2007). Her poetry is published in a variety of literary journals and in The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry and Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology. Her articles have appeared in publications including The Wisdom Daily, MyJewishLearning.com, the Jewish Daily Forward, Kveller, Alma, and Zeek. Ratzabi is Director of Virtual Content & Programs at Ritualwell.org and lives in Oak Park, Il., outside Chicago, with her spouse and two children.
Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D., president and CEO of Reconstructing Judaism, is the first woman rabbi to head a Jewish congregational union and seminary. She has drawn on her training as a rabbi and historian to be the Reconstructionist movement’s leading voice in the public square. Her writing has appeared in the Forward, The Times of Israel, The Philadelphia Inquirer, HuffPost, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and other news and academic outlets. Rabbi Waxman was named an LGBT History Icon in 2020. She projects a vision of Judaism that embraces all people and inspires Jews to be strong allies to the most vulnerable among us.

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

Ritualwell Open House – September 7th
2022-09-07 11:00 - 14:00 | Zoom
Hosted by Hila Ratzabi & Adva Chattler
Explore Ritualwell’s online learning offerings at our open house days! Enjoy a taste of our faculty’s inspiring teachings with short, 30-minute sessions. Free and open to all.
Open House sessions schedule:
11:00 a.m. EDT, Hila Ratzabi: “Writing the Earth’s Torah”
Now more than ever we need to give voice to the Earth’s cry for protection and reverence. Join poet Hila Ratzabi in exploring a few texts from the Psalms and Kabbalah that will serve as our inspiration for writing our own environmental prayers and poems. No writing experience necessary!

11:30 a.m. EDT, Sonia Gordon-Walinsky: “An Artistic Interpretation of the Name Pasuk”
Discover the tradition of the “name pasuk” (name verse)—a medieval minhag (custom) that Rashi refers to as an “ancient remedy”—and how artist Sonia Gordon-Walinsky is transforming it into an expression of personal connection to Torah/Tanakh.

12:00 p.m. EDT, Cathy Cohen: “Ekphrasis: The Poet”
Marc Chagall painted Half-Past Three (The Poet) in 1911 after leaving Russia and settling in Paris among the community of artists and poets. This painting of his friend, the poet Alexander Mazin, conveys energy and emotion as well as a variety of intriguing symbols. It’s a perfect springboard for us to explore the relationship between painter and poet, between visual art and written text. We will write our own ekphrastic poems based on the painting.
12:30 p.m. EDT, Rabbi Haviva Ner-David: “Finding Hope in Israel/Palestine”
Join rabbi and author Haviva Ner-David to hear about some of what is happening in Israel/Palestine that offers glimmers of hope: stories you don’t tend to hear in the mainstream media. She will share about her ongoing activity as part of a growing Arab-Jewish movement working together to build a shared equal and just society through deep listening, acknowledging one another’s narratives, healing collective trauma, and joint grassroots activism to build a better future for all in Israel/Palestine.
1:00 p.m. EDT, Mike Brown: “Planning Your Jewish Garden”
What makes a “Jewish garden”? Some plants will help transport you to different times and places; others will entice your senses with aromas, tastes, and beauty, while providing fruits and vegetables for Jewish holidays. This session will prepare you to “hit the ground running” in the spring with tips on preparing your Jewish garden. In honor of the upcoming Jewish New Year, we will also discuss ways to help bees by patronizing local beekeepers and planting flowers, shrubs, and trees that nourish bees.

1:30 p.m. EDT – ADVOT Info session
Curious about ADVOT@Ritualwell, our year-long cohort for ritual innovators, poets, and liturgists? Hop into an info session to ask your questions and learn more about this dynamic, online, Jewish creative community!

Making Ripples: Celebrating ADVOT@Ritualwell
2022-08-27 20:00 - 21:00
Hosted by Hila Ratzabi & Adva Chattler
Join us to celebrate the first year of ADVOT@Ritualwell, an online creative community of ritual innovators, poets and liturgists. All year long our members have been writing new poems, prayers and rituals, nourished by monthly salons on topics related to Jewish creativity, and supporting each other at our weekly online writing studio. We now come together to celebrate the fruits of our creative labor and hear the voices of our inspiring community. This event is free and open to all.
Featuring: Terry Boyle, Jane Blumenthal, Alex Carter, Jessica de Koninck, Batya Diamond, Janet Madden, Heather Paul, Danielle Selber, Janice Steinberg, Amy Steingart, Karen Webber
Donations are welcome and will support the ADVOT program.
ADVOT@Ritualwell is an online creative community of ritual innovators, poets and liturgists who meet regularly to share work and support and empower each other to create and innovate Jewish ritual, poetry and liturgy. Launched in 2021, ADVOT means “ripples” in Hebrew. RIPL (pronounced “ripple”) is the acronym of “Ritual Innovators, Poets, Liturgists.”
Thank you to Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah for supporting ADVOT.
