Ritualwell

ADVOT@Ritualwell Studio sessions - Winter semester
2023-01-09 12:00 - 13:00 (America/New_York) | Zoom
Join in for a time to create and connect!

Dreaming Against the Current: Exploring Spiritual Modalities
2022-12-21 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
In this session, we will explore some of Rabbi Haviva’s favorite spiritual companioning modalities, including dreamwork, nature soul work, and inner child work. She will read excerpts from her new memoir, Dreaming Against the Current: A Rabbi’s Soul Journey, as examples of the modalities at work, and participants will be given prompts to begin to do some of that work themselves. There will be time for sharing as well. Participants are encouraged to come prepared with a pencil and notebook for journaling as well as an image from a dream, a significant childhood event you feel changed your life in some way, and a favorite animal, tree, or any other aspect of nature.
Rabbi Dr. Haviva Ner-David is the rabbinic founder of Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body, and Soul, the only mikveh in Israel open to all to immerse as they choose. Ordained as both a rabbi and an interfaith minister, certified as a spiritual companion (with a specialty in dream work), and with a doctorate on mikveh from Bar Ilan University, she offers mikveh guidance and spiritual companioning for individuals and couples, as well as mikveh workshops and classes for groups. Rabbi Haviva is the author of three spiritual journey memoirs and a novel. Her most recent memoir, Dreaming Against the Current: A Rabbi’s Soul Journey, is about her journey into interspirituality and dreamwork. Her two previous spiritual journey memoirs are titled: Chanah’s Voice: A Rabbi Wrestles with Gender, Commandment, and the Women’s Rituals of Baking, Bathing, and Brightening, and Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Towards Traditional Rabbinic Ordination, a runner up for the National Jewish Book Council Awards. Hope Valley, her debut novel, is about the friendship between a Palestinian and a Jewish woman in Galilee, where Haviva lives. She is also the mother of seven and lives with FSHD, a form of muscular dystrophy, which has been one of her greatest teachers.
The session will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.
We are happy to offer this session for free. Please consider adding a donation to Ritualwell to help us continue to offer free programs like this one!

Healing Through Writing: For Cancer Survivors and Those Facing Illness
2022-12-19 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
Cancer, like other forms of serious illness, is not simply a physical experience, but also emotional and spiritual. In order to heal from a cancer experience, we must address all three aspects. The physical healing is directed by our healthcare teams. There are many ways to heal emotionally and spiritually, but we often find ourselves navigating this on our own. Luckily, there are many ways we can enhance our healing. This session will focus on writing and ritual as a means of healing, which has been studied as an effective way to heal from both physical and emotional trauma. Led by Melissa K. Rosen, two-time cancer survivor, a member of ADVOT’s first cohort, and the Director of Training and Education at Sharsheret: The Jewish Breast and Ovarian Cancer Community. This program is open to all who have been impacted by illness.
Melissa K. Rosen, Sharsheret’s Director of Training and Education, holds a master’s degree in Jewish Communal Service from Brandeis University and has been working in the non-profit sector for over 30 years. Her professional experience includes informal education and programming, advocacy, and community outreach. Melissa has facilitated unique and lasting connections among organizations in the diverse American Jewish community. Melissa oversees community education throughout the country, training health care professionals, Jewish professionals, and Sharsheret’s volunteers. She also manages Sharsheret’s Community Partnerships. Herself a two-time cancer survivor, Melissa has used writing as a healing technique. She is passionate about the Jewish community and cancer support and advocacy.
The session will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.
We are happy to offer this session for free. Please consider adding a donation to Ritualwell to help us continue to offer free programs like this one!

This Little Light of Mine: 8 Mindful Rituals for Hanukkah
2022-12-13 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
During Hanukkah, at the heart of winter, we enact a ritual that teaches us to grow in our light. Starting with a single flickering flame, the festival of lights concludes with a glorious fully lit menorah, visible through the window, shining from within and out to the world. How can we allow this ritual to transform us? Join Dr. Mira Neshama Weil for a session dedicated to shining our light within and without. Through reflecting on the meaning of the festival, meditating, and learning rituals for our menorah lighting each night, we will prepare for Hanukkah with purpose and presence and make each day of lighting the menorah a truly meaningful, transformative practice. The session comprises text study, guided meditation, ritual learning and time for questions and sharings. People of all backgrounds are welcome.
Dr. Mira Neshama Weil is a Paris-born scholar and teacher of Jewish spirituality and meditation. A post-doctoral fellow (Hebrew University of Jerusalem/Oxford University) working on contemporary Jewish spirituality, a certified Jewish Experiential Educator (Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies/Yesod European Fellows), a Certified Mindfulness Instructor (Mindfulness Training Institute), a Certified Jewish Mindfulness Teacher (Institute for Jewish Spirituality), and a Certified Vinyasa-Ashtanga Yoga teacher (RYT 200h at Sira Yoga), she teaches Torah and Jewish meditation internationally for institutions such as Or HaLev, Applied Jewish Spirituality, the Romemu Yeshiva, IJS, Moishe House, and more. She lives in Tel Aviv with her husband Matan and their dog Nissim, and when she’s not busy learning or teaching about Jewish spirituality, she works on growing her illustration portfolio and her guitar and Hebrew chanting, while experimenting to bake the perfect challah.
The session will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.
We are happy to offer this session for free. Please consider adding a donation to Ritualwell to help us continue to offer free programs like this one!

Soul of Shabbat: Writing from the Kabbalat Shabbat Liturgy
2022-11-28 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
November 28, 30, December 5, 7, 12, 14, 2022
12:00–1:30 p.m. EST
Shabbat is a time of sanctity and rest that has inspired poets and liturgists for centuries. In this immersion, we’ll explore the Kabbalat Shabbat service as a doorway into writing our own prayers and poems about Shabbat. We’ll examine core themes and metaphors of Shabbat as well as related textual sources. We’ll delve into Shalom Aleichem and Lecha Dodi as well as themes of creation, light, oneg (delight), and neshamah yeteirah, the special gift of an additional “Sabbath soul.” Join poet and liturgist Alden Solovy as we use each of these themes as an invitation to create new Shabbat poetry and prayer.
Alden Solovy spreads joy and excitement for prayer. An American Israeli liturgist, lyricist, poet, author, and educator, Alden is the Liturgist-in-Residence for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. Alden teaches prayer and spirituality throughout the world. Based in Jerusalem, his five solo books include This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a New Day, This Joyous Soul: A New Voice for Ancient Yearnings, and the newly released This Precious Life: Encountering the Divine with Poetry and Prayer, all published by CCAR Press. A regular contributor to Ritualwell and a member of the Ritualwell Immersion faculty, his work is anthologized in more than 20 other volumes across the religious spectrum. Alden also contributes regularly to RavBlog, ReformJudaism.org, and the Times of Israel. He’s a three-time winner of the Peter Lisagor Award for Exemplary Journalism. Alden made aliyah to Jerusalem in 2012. See his work at www.tobendlight.com. Alden can be reached at alden@tobendlight.com.
All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Ukrainian Jewish Experience through the Lens of Literature
2022-11-07 19:00 - 20:30 | Zoom
In this immersion, we’ll read some of the most iconic and unforgettable Ukrainian-Jewish writers and poets: Isaac Babel, Sholem Aleichem, Lidiya Ginzburg, Der Nister, and others. Religious or secular, written in Russian or Yiddish, these works bring the old world roaring back with humor, wisdom, tragedy, dreams, eros, and above all, a rich Jewish history. Keeping Ukraine and its people in our hearts minds will be both a balm and a tribute in this difficult time.
Jake Marmer is a poet, performer, and educator. He is the author of three poetry collections: Cosmic Diaspora (Station Hill Press, 2020), as well as The Neighbor Out of Sound (2018) and Jazz Talmud (2012), both from The Sheep Meadow Press. He also released two klez-jazz-poetry records: Purple Tentacles of Thought and Desire (2020, with Cosmic Diaspora Trio), and Hermeneutic Stomp (Blue Fringe Music, 2013). Jake is the poetry critic for Tablet Magazine. Born in the provincial steppes of Ukraine, in a city that was renamed four times in the past 100 years, Jake lives in LA.

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

Writing the Spiritual Essay
2022-11-03 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
Your search for meaning. Describing the indescribable. Your life purpose. Honoring the sacred. Reframing a tragic moment from your life. Whether you are atheist, agnostic, spiritual, mystical, full of faith, full of doubt or some of both – how can we write about the spiritual part of our lives? Finding the words for the spiritual side of your life – or lack thereof – offers the chance for powerful personal growth. In this immersion, we’ll use sections of essays and memoirs to help us dig into elements that make a personal narrative spiritual. What separates this writing from personal, confessional, coming-of-age or quest pieces? We’ll discuss scene, detail, language, pacing, storyline, structure, voice and theme. Writing prompts will be offered each week, and we’ll share work in progress. Writers of all levels and backgrounds are welcome.
Ellen Blum Barish is the author of the spiritual memoir Seven Springs (Shanti Arts, 2021), the essay collection Views from the Home Office Window (Adams Street Publishing, 2007), and a contributor to Chicago Storytellers From Stage to Page (Chicago Story Press, 2020). You can find her personal essays in Tablet, Lilith, Brevity’s Blog, Full Grown People, Literary Mama, and The Chicago Tribune and hear them on Chicago Public Radio. She founded the literary publication Thread, which earned four notables in Best American Essays. Ellen has taught writing at Northwestern University, Chicago-area synagogues, and writer’s studios, including Story Studio Chicago and Lighthouse Lit Fest. She works privately with writers on essay collections and memoir.

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

Story Magic: Fiction Writing Through a Jewish Lens, Part 1
2022-11-01 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
From biblical and midrashic narratives to contemporary fiction published in literary journals, good stories ignite our imaginations and serve as portals to the human experience. In this generative workshop, we’ll explore the craft of fiction through reading and writing as we unfold the wings of imaginative prose. Each week we’ll discuss a short story, assimilate craft techniques, and write from prompts. This workshop is suitable for poets, journalists, fiction writers, and curious readers.
Amy Gottlieb‘s debut novel The Beautiful Possible was a finalist for the 2017 Harold U. Ribalow Prize, a 2016 National Jewish Book Award and Edward Lewis Wallant Award. Her fiction and poetry have been published in Other Voices, Lilith, Puerto del Sol, Ilanot Review, On Being, Zeek, Storyscape, The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry, and elsewhere. She has received a Literary Fellowship and Residency from the Bronx Council on the Arts, and an Arts Fellowship from the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education. Amy is a graduate of Clark University and the University of Chicago. She lives with her family on the edge of the Hudson River in New York City.
All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

ADVOT@Ritualwell Studio sessions - Fall semester
2022-10-25 14:00 - 15:00 | Zoom

Written in Moonlight: A Monthly Rosh Hodesh Journey
2022-10-25 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
This group meets monthly from October through June. You may register for individual monthly sessions or the full year. All sessions will be recorded in case you can’t attend live.
Full year (9 months): $300 (save $24!)
Single sessions: $36 each
Join us for Ritualwell’s inaugural monthly Rosh Hodesh experience! Each month, from October through June, we will gather virtually for ritual and writing in a creative-spiritual liminal space. We will be guided by the ancient Jewish tradition of welcoming each month with the emergence of the new moon. We will honor the wisdom and practices of our foremothers, recalling that Rosh Hodesh has historically been a sacred time for women—and celebrating those women who our tradition lifts up throughout the year—while raising a tent that is wide enough for all who wish to enter. At each gathering, participants will be invited to contribute a short song, prayer, meditation, niggun, poem, story, kavannah, or drash dedicated to the emerging month, followed by teaching, discussion, and writing prompts led by Sivan Rotholz, a ritualist, community builder, and professor of gynocentric Torah and creative writing who believes deeply in the magic of the new moon. People of all genders and backgrounds are welcome. No previous ritual, writing, or Rosh Hodesh experience necessary.
Sivan Rotholz is a professor of gynocentric Torah and creative writing. She has taught at Brooklyn College, Tel Aviv University, Columbia/Barnard Hillel, Moishe House, and elsewhere, and has shared her Torah in synagogues and living rooms across the globe. Her writing has appeared in the Jewish Journal, 929, and Ritualwell, among other publications. She is the Education Director for Achayot – Jewish Women Writers, and is pursuing rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion.

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

Meditating with the Siddur
2022-10-24 13:00 - 14:30 | Zoom
Prayer is a means to connect meaningfully to the infinite loving center of the universe. Yet praying from words written by other people in very different contexts from our own can be challenging. If we slow down our encounter with each prayer, we can appreciate that they are each a carefully composed work of spiritual technology. They are roadmaps of inner discovery, full of questions that can invite us to open to new experiences of self-awareness, gratitude, empathy, love, resilience, connection, and wholeness. In this immersion, we will explore prayers from Shacharit (the Morning Service) as invitations to meditative practices and exercises, including embodied movement, writing exercises, guided visualizations, chanting, and so on. Together, we will deepen our experiential connection to prayers such as the Shema and the Amidah, in ways that we can later draw upon whenever we desire. With each prayer, we will search for how it resonates within us, and how it can support us in our ongoing journey of becoming our best possible selves. There will also be space for intentional sharing, so we will be enriched by both our own inner experiences and that of our fellow community members.
Daniel Raphael Silverstein is a rabbi, educator, meditation teacher and MC/poet. He lives in Israel with his family, where he directs Applied Jewish Spirituality, an online portal which makes the transformative spiritual wisdom of our tradition accessible to all who seek it. Daniel is an accredited teacher of Jewish Mindfulness Meditation and regularly teaches classes and retreats. Daniel was born and raised in London, and he received a BA from the University of Cambridge and an MA from Warwick University. After receiving semikha from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, he served as Director of Jewish Life and Learning for Hillel of Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA. Daniel has performed and facilitated all over the world as a spoken word artist, MC, and creative educator, and the Jewish Week selected him as one of their “36 Under 36” young innovators reshaping the Jewish community. Daniel is a cofounder of Lines of Faith, a Muslim-Jewish hip hop and poetry collective that uses performances and workshops to challenge prejudice and build meaningful bonds between communities.
All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Filling the Well: A Monthly Embodied Creativity Salon
2022-10-19 13:00 - 14:00 | Zoom
In this FREE monthly drop-in salon, we will use embodied practices, including breathing, sound meditation, and movement to quiet the inner critic, calm the nervous system, and open the creative channel. From that place we will explore generative prompts designed to free your creative expression. You will leave the space more deeply connected to your authentic creative voice and ready to put it to use.

Elana Bell is a poet, sound practitioner, and creative guide. She facilitates artistic rituals and processes that support individuals and groups in accessing their authentic voice and alchemizing raw experience and emotion into artistic expression. Elana is the author of Mother Country (BOA Editions in 2020), poems about fertility, motherhood, and mental illness. Elana’s debut collection of poetry, Eyes, Stones (LSU Press 2012), was selected by Fanny Howe as the winner of the 2011 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and brings her complex heritage as the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors to consider the difficult question of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In addition to leading her own embodied Creative Fire workshops, Elana teaches poetry to actors at the Juilliard School and sings with the Resistance Revival Chorus, a group of women activists and musicians committed to bringing joy and song to the resistance movement. She is also the founder of the Mother Artist Salon, a community dedicated to supporting mothers in their artistic practice. www.elanabell.com

Please note these sessions will not be recorded.
We are happy to offer this series for free. Please consider adding a donation to Ritualwell to help us continue to offer free programs like this one!

Songs of the Grass: Exploring Jewish Eco-Poetry
2022-10-13 12:00 - 13:30 | Zoom
“Each and every grass has a song” – Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav
The Jewish environmental movement has sought to excavate and breathe new life into ancient texts that call us to right relationship with this fragile and holy earth. Jewish poets vividly describe the human encounter with plants, animals, and the elements where they often find intimations of the Divine or cause for protest on behalf of the non-human world. Together we’ll read poetry and other Jewish writings that will inspire our own experiments with eco-poetry. Some poets we will read include Marge Piercy, Muriel Rukeyser, Alicia Ostriker, Adrienne Rich, Denise Levertov, Stanley Moss, Stuart Kestenbaum, Phillip Levine, Mónica Gomery, and more! We’ll engage in writing exercises, some of which will take us outside to our local environments to allow us to listen to, and translate, the voices of the earth. You will come away with a deepened appreciation for Jewish wisdom on the environment and a number of poem drafts that will help you envision your personal Torah of the earth.
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.
All sessions will be recorded and sent to participants. We encourage live attendance for you to get the most out of the experience.

Creating New Jewish Liturgy: A Talk with Dr. Marcia Falk
2022-09-22 15:00 - 16:30 | 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.
