Nehirim | Men’s Retreat 2010

The Nehirim Men’s Retreat is a weekend of community and spirituality for gay and bisexual Jewish men, featuring workshops, Shabbat services, and plenty of time to relax and connect. Nehirim is an independent, nondenominational and nonprofit organization that celebrates being queer and celebrates being Jewish, and has been running retreats like this for seven years.

Click here to register.

So what is the Nehirim Men’s Retreat? Well, we are the nice Jewish boys your mother warned you about. We are sexual and spiritual, proud to be queer and proud to be Jewish. Our retreat is open to all self-identified men, and features an entire weekend of yoga, meditation, Shabbat services, workshops, plus plenty of time to relax by the fireplace, in the hot tub, or hiking through the woods of the Berkshires. All this for only $225 including full room and board.

This year’s retreat faculty includes playwright Dan Fishback, performance artist Amichai Lau-Lavie, Israeli writer Gideon Lichfield, adult film star Mike Dreyden, Rabbis Jacob Staub and Steven Nathan, Jay Michaelson, and many more. Whether you’re secular or religious, age 18 or age 68, Super Jew or just a bagel and lox kind of boy, you’ll find people like yourself at Nehirim.

Click one of the following links for more information:

-Tachlis/Logistics
-About our Teachers and Presenters
-Tentative Schedule for the retreat
-Halachic Information
-Questions? Contact Us!

- Tachlis (Practical Information)

Registration

Click this link to register now. (As of February 15, 50 guys have already registered; we expect between 80-100 total.)

Location & Transportation Information

The retreat will be held at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT. For directions and transportation information, please visit the Isabella Freedman website. Transportation is “on your own” — we cannot assist with transportation requests. To offer or request a ride to the retreat, visit our Ride Board. Isabella Freedman is also accessible by train from NYC. If you need to be picked up or dropped off at the Wassaic train station (for MetroNorth service from New York City), a shuttle will be made available for a $15 charge per person each way. Details will be posted in February.

For other pickup times or locations, Lakeville Taxi, (860) 435-8000, is available. Lakeville Taxi is a reservation service; 24 hours advance notice required, and reservations are nonrefundable within 24 hours.

Prices

We are committed to enabling everyone to attend the Men’s Retreat and look forward to a wide range of sexual, gender, economic, religious, and ethnic diversity. Our financial aid deadline and early bird deadline (February 1) has passed, but limited aid is still available if you email us directly. Prices shown below are per person and include all room & board for two nights, and all your program expenses — it really is a steal, no?

Basic: Triple/Quad $225, Double $325, Single $375 (very simple, shared bathrooms)

Private Bath: Triple $275, Double $350, Single $450 (nice, rustic)

Deluxe: Triple $325, Double $400, Single $475 (swanky)

Tentative Retreat Schedule

Friday, March 5
2:00-3:30 Arrival, snacks, and registration
3:30-4:30 Welcome and opening program
4:30 Mikva/Preparing for Shabbat
5:15 Candle-lighting & Shabbat Services
7:15-8:45 Shabbat Dinner
9:00-10:00 Mishpacha Groups
10:00-11:00 Evening Program: The Spiritual Journey of a Jewish Adult Film Star (Mike Dreyden)
11:00-12:00 Tisch (Singing, drinking, celebration) with Zvi Bellin

Shabbat, March 6
8:00-9:00 Morning Yoga
8:30-9:15 Breakfast
9:30-11:45 Shabbat Morning Davening (Prayer)
— Traditional Shacharit (Rabbis David Dunn-Bauer & Steven Nathan)
— Renewal Davening and Storahtelling (Zvi Bellin & Amichai Lau-Lavie)
12:00 - 1:15 Lunch
1:30-2:30 Afternoon Session 1 (Choose one)
— Narcissus Shrugged (Dan Fishback)
— Aging and the Gay Man (Jacob Staub)
— Israel, Gays, and Victimhood (Gideon Lichfield)
2:45 – 3:45 Afternoon Session 2 (Choose one)
— Gay Parenting (Amichai Lau-Lavie)
— Bottoming 101 (Rabbi David Dunn-Bauer)
— Creative Midrash (Rabbi Steven Nathan)
4:00 – 5:00 Afternoon Session 3 (Choose One)
— The Erotics of Talmud Study (Zvi Bellin)
— Do it for Yourself! (Mike Dreyden)
— Trans Masculinities 101 (Rafi Daugherty)
5:15 – 6:00 Afternoon Spiritual Practice
— Nap, walk, schmooze in the lounge
— Holy Shit! Text Study on Asher Yatzar (Amichai Lau-Lavie)
— Self-organized Mincha
— Yoga (Daniel Max)
6:15-7:30 Seudah Shlishit (Third meal/Dinner)
7:30-8:30 Small Groups
8:30- 8:45 Maariv Evening Service
8:45-9:00 Havdalah
9:00-10:00 Evening Program
— Performance of thirtynothing (Dan Fishback) & Talent Show
10:15-11:30 Night Program: Campfire, or Screening of V’Ahavta

Sunday, March 7
7:30-8:00 Cold breakfast available in dining hall
8:00-8:45 Morning spiritual practice
— Yoga (Zvi Bellin)
— 12 Step meeting (Rafi Daugherty)
— Shacharit (self-organized)
8:30-9:30 Breakfast
Note: Please pack up and checkout of your rooms by 9:30am
9:30-10:30 Sunday session 1
— Cultivating a Spiritual Practice (Rabbi Jacob Staub)
— Doing Drag in Palestine (Gideon Lichfield)
10:45-11:45 Sunday session 2
- What does being gay mean for being Jewish? (Jay Michaelson & Amichai Lau-Lavie)

- Exercises for Sexual Health (Daniel Max)

12:00–1:00 Closing session & final small group
1:00 Lunch
2:30 Tzeitchem L’Shalom!

Retreat Co-Directors

Amichai Lau-Lavie, Retreat Co-Director

Amichai Lau-Lavie is the Founder, Executive and Artistic director of Storahtelling. An Israeli-born teacher of Judaic Literature and performance artist, he is described as “one of the most interesting thinkers in the Jewish world” by the NY Jewish Week. Amichai has studied at the Shalom Hartman Institute and the Elul Center in Jerusalem and he has directed the summer programs at Melitz: the Jewish Zionist Centers in Jerusalem (1992-6), focusing on the integration of Jewish education via the arts. His theatrical experience as a writer and performer includes the Theatre Company Jerusalem, The Acco Theatre Group in Israel and the Avodah Dance Ensemble in the U.S. He has also served as Artist-in-Residence at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City (1997-2000). Amichai is a Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Israel (2008-2009) and is a consultant to the Reboot Network and a member of the Synagogue 3000 Leadership Network, and serves on the Advisory Council for the Six Points Fellowship, the Advisory Board for faithhouse manhattan , and the Board of Directors of Zeek Magazine.

Jay Michaelson

Jay Michaelson is the founder of Nehirim. For the last ten years, Jay has been a leading advocate for the inclusion of sexual minorities in religious communities, and his work in this area has been featured on NPR, CNN, and the New York Times. Jay is also a contributing editor to the Forward, Associate Editor of Religion Dispatches magazine, and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post. In 2009, he was included on the “Forward 50” list of “the men and women leading the American Jewish community into the 21st century.” He is the author of four books, most recently God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality.

Teachers and Presenters

Rabbi Steven Nathan

Rabbi Steven Nathan was ordained in 1994 by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He has studied midrash and storytelling at the Institute for Contemporary Midrash with renowned storyteller Peninnah Schra and is a graduate of the Meditation Leadership Training Program at the Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality. Steven currently serves Hampshire College as the Campus Rabbi. He is the proud father of three wonderful children, Shira, Eitana and Noah, and is the partner of Rabbi David Dunn Bauer.

Zvi Bellin

Zvi Bellin, Nehirim Engagement Associate, leads workshops and directs retreats that integrate body-heart-mind-soul in a variety of spiritual and religious contexts. Zvi holds an M.A. in Counseling and Guidance from NYU, and is studying for his PhD in Pastoral Counseling at Loyola College, Maryland. Zvi is a 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) with the Yoga Alliance. He has worked as a therapist in a number of mental health settings, and has interned as a Psychiatric Chaplain. Zvi’s most recent interests include exploring the raw experience of meaning in life, and the integration of personal spirituality into a practice of holistic well-being. He is a co-founder of the Silver Spring Moishe House, a Jewish community house sponsored by the Schusterman Foundation.

Rafi Daugherty

Rafi Daugherty is a twenty-something queer transman currently living in Brooklyn, New York. He has big dreams of making Aliyah in the near future and possibly working on an MSW. He graduated from Hunter College in 2009 with an undergraduate degree in Psychology with a minor in Sociology. He has worked most of his life with the special-needs population and enjoys that work thoroughly. He has also worked many years with at-risk teens and young adults in and out of recovery from drug and alcohol abuse. He has been a 12-step enthusiast since 2002 and currently is exploring his Judaism through a renewal lens. His recovery story is printed in the book, “Jewish Sisters in Sobriety”, which can be found online at www.jacsweb.org.

Mike Dreyden

From gogo boy to model to porn performer, Mike Dreyden has become a star in the gay adult entertainment industry and continues on a trajectory toward superstardom. He has appeared and can be seen dancing at events such as Saint at Large parties including the Black Party as well as local NYC bars including The Eagle, The Cock and others. Mike won the coveted 2008 GLAMMY award for go-go boy of the year.

Dan Fishback

Dan Fishback has been writing and performing in NYC since 2003. He is a recipient of the 2007-2009 Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists. The resulting play, You Will Experience Silence, debuted in April 2009 at Dixon Place, where Fishback was an Artist-in-Residence. The following summer, he began a fellowship at the MacDowell Artists Colony to develop two new plays, The Material World and The Mattachine Project. Fishback’s band, Cheese On Bread, has toured Europe and North America, and released its sophomore album, “The Search for Colonel Mustard,” in 2007, in the United States and Japan. As a solo artist, he will drop his new full length studio album, “Mammal,” in 2010. Fishback fronts grunge band The Faggots, and has shared stages with Ani Difranco and Kimya Dawson as part of the punk dance troupe Underthrust. He regularly visits colleges all over the country to speak on queer and Jewish issues.

Daniel Max

is a Nutrition and Health Counselor, Shiatsu Practitioner, and Yoga Instructor. He began his studies in holistic health in Israel, his home country. Leaving Israel, Daniel traveled through Far East Asia studying various modalities of healing arts such as Chinese medical and Indian Ayurvedic therapies. Once settling in the US, Daniel completed his studies in the fields of shiatsu, nutrition and health counseling. Daniel is a graduate of Columbia University affiliated Institute Of Integrative Nutrition and of the former Boston Institute of Shiatsu. Daniel is a nationally certified massage therapist as well as certified by the American Association of Drugless Practitioners.

Rabbi Jacob J. Staub

Rabbi Jacob J. Staub is Professor of Jewish Philosophy and Spirituality at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, where he served as Academic Vice President for 17 years and where he was ordained. He served as editor of the Reconstructionist magazine. He is the founder and director of the first program in Jewish Spiritual Direction at a rabbinical seminary. He teaches medieval Jewish studies, Jewish meditation, and Jewish spirituality. He is the author of The Creation of the World According to Gersonides and the co-author of Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach. He came out as a gay man in 2000.

Gideon Lichfield

Gideon Lichfield is deputy online editor at The Economist, where he has worked as journalist since 1996. He is at work on a book about the Jewish-Palestinian gay community, the only group of people ever to have conducted a serious Middle East peace process, and in 2011 he is slated to teach a course at NYU in foreign journalism, which the class of 2010 voted “the profession least likely to exist ten years from now”. In his spare time he studies climbing and dance, chiefly so that he can learn how to fall down without hurting himself.

If you would like more information, if you would like to volunteer to teach or lead services, you can always email us at info[at]nehirim.org.