Here are the evenings offerings:

6-6:30 PM

OPENING RITUAL

Reb Irwin Keller, Sheridan Gold, Leiah Bowden

6:30-7:20 PM

NETZAḤ UNBOUND: SECRETS OF RESILIENCE 

Rabbi Diane Elliot

On this Erev Shavuot, as we reach the end of our yearly trek to Sinai and open to the Torah revelations needed to sustain us through another year, let’s come together to explore more deeply the quality of Netzaḥ, Victory. As we embody Netzaḥ, one of the seven kabbalistic midot or qualities cultivated during the counting of the Omer, we strengthen our ability to persevere in the face of failure; we learn to listen more fully to our own soul’s voice; and we build the strength to act on what that voice is telling us. In this session, through song and contemplation, text study and conversation, we’ll deepen our relationship with the quality of Netzaḥ, highlighting some of Judaism’s most potent tools for navigating the Midbar, the great Wilderness of not-knowing in which our personal and communal spiritual journeys unfold. 

Rabbi Diane Elliot, is a spiritual teacher, ritual leader, somatic therapist, and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She inspires her students to become clearer channels for Presence through awareness and movement practices, chant, and nuanced interpretations of Jewish sacred text. Diane serves as a program director in the ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal and as a steward and faculty member of Taproot, a multi-generational community of Jewish artists, activists, and changemakers (www.taprootcommunity.org). Among her publications is This Is the Day, Ha-Yom Yom, poems inspired by the practice of counting the Omer. To learn more about her work, visit www.whollypresent.org. 

7:30-8:20 PM

A JEWISH ENVIRONMENTAL ETHIC FOR OUR TIME FROM THE MIDDLE AGES: MAIMONIDES & THE GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED 

Rabbi George Gittleman

We will see how a short section of Maimonides most famous philosophic work can be used as an Environmental Ethic from the heart of Jewish traditional into the broken environmental heart of the world. 

Rabbi George Gittleman has been the Spiritual leader of Congregation Shomrei Torah since 1996.  Ordained from the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi George is also a Senior Rabbinic Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and a graduate of the Rabbinic Leadership Program and Jewish Mindfulness Mediation Certification program of The Institute for Jewish Spirituality.  He is also an avid birder and community naturalist.

8:30-9:20 PM

AM YISRAEL HIGH: SCALING THE MOUNTAIN ON SHAVUOT

Alissa Hirshfeld, MFT

Together we’ll journey through evidence of the historical use of cannabis and plant medicine in Jewish circles, gleaned through religious texts and archaeological findings.  Alissa will also share her research on how plant medicines are being used by contemporary Jewish seekers for psycho-spiritual growth and insights. 

Alissa Hirschfeld is a licensed marriage and family therapist, certified spiritual director, and certified psychedelic-assisted psychotherapist.  As part of her training at the California Institute of Integral Studies’ Center for Psychedelic Therapy and Research, she researched the use of plant medicine within Judaism—historically and among modern seekers.  She leads meditations through the Jewish Meditation Center at Congregation Shomrei Torah. 

9:30-10:20 PM

RITUAL OF RESILIENCE: FASTING, PRAYER, AND CHALK OUTLINES

Rabbi Irwin Keller

In ancient days, during times of drought, famine, or plague, our ancestors would call for community-wide fasting and prayer. To what end? What is the value of public spiritual practices and ritual theater in times of peril? Is there a role for communal symbolic acts and austerities in our time? Reb Irwin will bring texts from Talmud as well as examples from the Civil Rights Era, AIDS activism, and COVID times, to help us imagine new possibilities of public practice.

Rabbi Irwin Keller has served Sonoma County’s Congregation Ner Shalom since 2008. He is a founder and faculty member of the Taproot Community, offering Jewish activists a path for deepening in Jewish practice (taprootcommunity.org). He is an LGBTQI rights activist, and authored Chicago’s gay rights law, in force since 1989. He was a founder and, for 21 years, a performer with the Kinsey Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet. He is ordained by the ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal, in the lineage of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. Reb Irwin blogs at irwinkeller.com.

10:30-11:20 PM

LEARNING FROM THE EDGE AT THE UKRAINIAN BORDER

Yael Raff Peskin in conversation with Shoshana Fershtman

Yael Raff Peskin had been observing the Shmitah year by taking a sabbatical year from her daily life, by living with Tico families in the remote village of Gandoca, Costa Rica. During this year, Yael has grown in her understanding that her personal well-being is not separate from the well-being of others. For this reason, Yael headed to Poland to help support Ukrainians fleeing the devastating war in their country. She worked in shelters housing Ukrainian children and their mothers and grandmothers and was a volunteer at World Central Kitchen in Przemysl, Poland.

Yael is continually bowled over by the outpouring of support for the Ukrainian people by ordinary Israelis of every age who are here in huge numbers, helping out in every way that they can. As she says, "I have never been more proud to be part of a lineage that, literally, puts itself on the line to assure the well-being of others. The children of these young Israelis will never have to wonder what their parents did while the rest of the world stood by."

In this session, Yael will, in conversation with Shoshana Fershtman, share her experiences, impressions, and inspirations working with displaced Ukrainians.

Yael Raff Peskin interweaves her Jewish observance with Zen mindfulness practice and the nature-based teachings of Waldorf education. In KULANU (All of Us), Yael created a nature-based program for infants–preschoolers, sharing Jewish tradition in a Waldorf-inspired setting. Yael was ordained as a senior student by Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in 1993, and has facilitated meditation groups, mindfulness retreats, and Jewish festival celebrations in nature for over forty years. In 2017, Yael was the San Francisco Bay Area’s recipient of the Grinspoon Award for Excellence in Jewish Education. She is the mother of three adult children and grandmother to one of the sweetest people she has ever met!

 Shoshana Fershtman, JD, PhD, is a Jungian analyst and psychologist in Sonoma County, and author of The Mystical Exodus in Jungian Perspective: Transforming Trauma and the Wellsprings of Renewal.

11:30–MIDNIGHT

THE SOUND OF ALEPH - MEDITATION AS REVELATION

Rabbi George Gittleman

We will work with the letters of the shem hameforash / the explicit Name of God, YHWH, as a mantra for this ancient meditation from the heart of Kabbalah. 

MIDNIGHT

CLOSING

Barbara Lesch McCaffry & Rabbi Irwin Keller