While there is no charge to attend, registration is required
Tikkun Leyl Shavuot
We are living in a climate of renewed book-banning and suppression of difference. So on this holiday of Torah and revelation, we come together to look at teachings that have been considered dangerous and identities that have been suppressed, both within Jewish tradition and more broadly. What are these ideas that have been considered taboo, and how have they hung on so resiliently, despite the best efforts of those who would stamp them out?
Join us on Zoom for this evening of honoring forbidden and enduring wisdom. Join us in person at the Ner Shalom courtyard the next day, Monday June 2, at 4pm for Shavuot Tish.
Tikkun Schedule
5:45 pm: Zoom Room Opens
6:00 pm: Welcome & Opening Ritual
Rabbi Irwin Keller & Lia Goldman Miller
Lia Goldman Miller is a Bay Area-born and raised musician and dancer, who graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2007 and received a certificate in Sound Voice and Music Healing from CIIS in San Francisco in 2012. For her, voice was the most liberating form of expression she possessed. The melodies of her Jewish upbringing always hold a magical power over her, bringing her right back to her soul's root. Joy for her is singing in harmony with another being. Today she continues to explore her practice of sharing and creating music to heal and create balance, as well as singing within the singing circle realm and Ner Shalom’s Nitzanim band, Challat Dvash.
6:20 pm: Session 1, Keynote Presentation
Does Spirit Truly Move Among Us: Reflections on Panpsychism and the Nature of Consciousness
Michael Lerner and Oren Slozberg
Are miracles real? Are some of the miracles described in Torah and Talmud literally true? Does the impossible sometimes happen? Can the soul survive death? Can prayer affect outcomes? Do people sometimes fly? Are paranormal (psi) phenomena real?
In philosophy of mind and other fields, there is currently a strong resurgence in the view that consciousness may be universal and not simply an epiphenomenon of the evolution of the human brain. In this session, Michael Lerner and Oren Slozberg will discuss the current work of Jeffrey Kripal of Rice University in Houston in this area, and how it relates to the human experiences we sometimes call “paranormal” or, in religious parlance, “miraculous.” Read more about panpsychism by clicking here and about Jeffrey Kripal by clicking here.
Michael Lerner is the co-founder of Commonweal. He has worked extensively in environmental health and justice, integrative cancer care, and the polycrisis awareness movement. His current work is centered on personal and planetary resilience. He is a MacArthur Fellow and author of Choices in Healing.
Oren Slozberg is the Executive Director at Commonweal, focused on healing, justice, and resilience. His work at Commonweal is currently focused on fostering the expansion of Commonweal’s capacity and diversity, meeting emerging needs, and cultivating new kinds of programs addressing the changing world and the polycrisis. For decades, Oren has been a senior program developer in the fields of education, youth development, and the arts.
7:15 pm: Interlude
Gal Eynai: Unveil My Eyes
Atzilah Solot
The intention for this chant is to honor the process of growth and exploration we have been through alone and in the collective, as we arrive at this moment. We allow all that we no longer need — “the veil,” limitations, both imposed and self-created — to drop away, as we affirm our vulnerability, call in new vision for our lives, and open to new learning and possibilities.
Atzilah/Ellen Solot is a chant leader, composer, performance artist, visual artist and teacher in body-mind movement arts. She is dedicated to gently and playfully guiding others into their bodies to cultivate deep presence, creativity, satisfaction and joy. She is a student of Rabbi Shefa Gold and a graduate of the Kol Zimrah chant leadership program. She has served for over a dozen years as Ner Shalom’s resident Chant Leader.
7:30 pm : Session 2 (Two Parallel Workshops)
Judaism and Non-Duality: A Personal Perspective
Gesher Calmenson
Non-duality is the hallmark of what we call Eastern religions. Yet so many Jews have been drawn to Buddhism that we even have our own nickname, American JewBu. This talk will be about a personal exploration of the Jewish-Buddhist interface, and will consider the Biblical story of Jacob as an example of one life's encounter with duality and non-duality.
Gesher Calmenson works on synthesizing Jewish and Buddhist teaching. He is the emeritus director of education at Ner Shalom, founder of RememberUs.org, served for ten years as chair of the Sonoma County Yom Hashoah Committee, teaches bar/bat mitzvah preparation, is a Jewish Family Education Fellow, and former director of Esalen Institute San Francisco. He came to Jewish education 30 years ago after a 40-year career in printing and publishing. This year, God willing, he will celebrate his 90th birthday.
Lilith, Ishtar, Beruriah: Illustrations of Banned & Suppressed Aspects of the Feminine
Yoreshet Ruach D’vorah Grenn
What parts of women and the Sacred Feminine have been demonized, silenced, erased across the millennia? What has been the justification for such injustice and misrepresentation? If the driving force has been patriarchy, have only men created and perpetuated it?
Yoreshet Ruach D'vorah Grenn, Ph.D. is a Kohenet/priestess, ordained Mashpi’ah and Yoreshet/lineage holder of a female Kabbalist tradition. She founded The Lilith Institute (1997), co-directed the Women's Spirituality MA Program at ITP/Sofia University and has taught at Ner Shalom, Hebrew College, Aquarian Minyan, Napa Valley College. Now Faculty with Yerusha Academy, she co-teaches “Tree of Life” with Rabbi Nadya Gross; they recently co-produced the symposium “Wisdom of the Mothers: Celebrating Matriarchal & Matrilineal Spiritual Traditions.” D’vorah was a founding theorist of the Hebrew priestess movement and on Kohenet Institute’s Founding Advisory Board. Her publications include: For She Is A Tree of Life: Shared Roots Connecting Women to Deity, her dissertation on beliefs and rituals among U.S. and South African Lemba women of Jewish ancestry, and Lilith’s Fire. She also edited Talking to Goddess, an anthology of writings from 72 women in 25 traditions.
8:25 pm: Session 3 (Two Parallel Workshops)
Waking Up Sparks of Holiness
Basha Hirschfeld & Reb Judith Goleman
Being banned can wake up the Holy Sparks of courage. In both Buddhism and Judaism there is a need to break loose from fixed ideas in order to be present in the holiness of the moment.
Reb Judith and Basha will dig deeper into this occurrence in both spiritual paths, to reignite the sparks of holiness, and not allow our practices to become rote, and empty of the living truth.
Barbara (Basha) Hirschfeld has been a student of Buddhism for over 25 years, and of Judaism all her life. She is one of a few lucky students of Ani Pema Chodron and through her of the Shambhala lineage, as first taught by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She teaches meditation in the North Bay at various venues and owns and runs a retreat space in west Sonoma County called “Open Sky Retreat Space.” Her favorite thing is to bring together the two wisdom traditions, and to explore how her Buddhist training can inform her Jewish faith.
Rabbinic Pastor Judith Goleman, MFT, is a chaplain and also has a private practice in individual and couple counseling. As a teenager she fell in love with the tales of the Hasidic Rabbis of the 18th century who saw God as the deep nature of everything in Creation (including us in our true potential). As an adult she was ordained as a Rabbinic Pastor in the Jewish Renewal movement. It also informs her psychotherapy practice.
Esther Kreitman: The Woman Who Inspired Yentl
Elaine Elinson
Esther Kreitman was a brilliant novelist, short story writer and translator, yet her work has been hidden under the shadow of her well-known younger brothers, Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer and Israel Joshua Singer. Bashevis said of his sister, “I do not know of a single woman in Yiddish literature who wrote better than she did.” Yet she had to defy her family to pursue a writing career and, like many women writers of her era, had to struggle to be published. In her 1936 autobiographical novel, Deborah, she writes of her thwarted desire to study. Elinson will share selections from Kreitman’s novel and short stories, looking especially at ways in which her view of the Singer family differs greatly from that of her acclaimed brothers, and why Kreitman’s voice is so resonant today.
Elaine Elinson is co-author of Wherever There’s a Fight: How Runaway Slaves, Suffragists, Immigrants, Strikers, and Poets Shaped Civil Liberties in California, recipient of a Gold Medal in the California Book Awards and a starred review in Publishers Weekly. Named a San Francisco Library Laureate in 2010, Elinson is a book reviewer for Kirkus, the Jewish Book Council, Ms. magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books and other publications. A former journalist in Southeast Asia, her first book, Development Debacle: the World Bank in the Philippines was banned by the Marcos regime. She served as Communications Director for the ACLU of Northern California. Elinson is currently working on a book based on the recent discovery of her grandmother's diaries spanning the years 1905-1918, with entries from a shtetl in Russia to a tenement in Chicago. Visit elaineelinson.com.
9:20 pm: Interlude
Musical Meditation
Sheridan Gold
We continue to open ourselves to the possibility of revelation by experiencing the transcendent possibilities of music. Breathe deep as Sheridan offers a musical meditation on the handpan.
Sheridan Gold, member of Ner Shalom's Good Shabbos Band, began playing silver flute when she was 8 years old. In addition to the silver flute, she continues to express herself with Alto flute, Native American Flutes, West African drumming, and the handpan. Sheridan has a K-12 teaching credential in Music Education and teaches group classes and private lessons.
9:35 pm: Session 4
Merchav-Yah: Gender Expansiveness in the Human and the Divine
Rabbi Irwin Keller
Jewish text and tradition offer us glimpses of individuals who transgress the gender binary, as well as lore that places the Divine beyond our notions of gender altogether. We will look at a couple eye-opening texts and point toward more for self-study. It is more important than ever for us to understand the presence and longevity of these ideas in Judaism.
Rabbi Irwin Keller has been the spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom since 2008. He is founder and faculty of the Taproot Community since 2017. He authored Chicago's first comprehensive human rights law, in effect since 1989, and served at the helm of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel of the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a founder of the Kinsey Sicks, America's Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet and is the author of Shechinah at the Art Institute: Words, Worry, Wonder (Blue Light Press 2024). He blogs at irwinkeller.com.
10:35 pm: Session 5
From the Flames: The Banning of Maimonides
Rabbi George Gittleman
In this session Rabbi George will introduce us to Moses Maimonides, known as the Rambam. He was a halakhist, healer, heretic, and hero. His ideas about God were so threatening that his books were burned. And yet he survived to become a giant of Jewish thought for all times.
Rabbi George Gittleman is the Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Shomrei Torah where he was their Spiritual leader for 28 years. 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.
11:35 – Midnight: Harvest and Closing Ritual
Rabbi Irwin Keller and Barbara Lesch McCaffry
Barbara Lesch McCaffry, PhD, has been exploring and untangling the work of contemporary feminist writers and poets since her days as an undergraduate student and it remains a passion. She taught in Sonoma State's interdisciplinary program, the Hutchins School of Liberal Studies, as well as in the Departments of English, American Multicultural Studies, Global Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Since 2000, she has also been actively involved in Holocaust and genocide education. She is currently the Dean of Ner Shalom’s Beit Midrash: Lifelong Jewish Learning.