* LGBT Jewish teachers, rabbis, scholars, lay leaders, and community organizers including: Rabbi David Dunn-Bauer (Body Electric), Julie Seltzer, (scribe of the As It Is Written Project), Sasha T. Goldberg and Zvi Bellin (Nehirim), Jo Ellen Green Kaiser (Zeek), Jocelyn Olick (local Union organizer), Jules Shendelman (photographer), and Dr. Marie Cartier (author of Baby, You Are My Religion: 1950s Butch-Femme Bar Culture).

*Workshops, cocktails, Shabbat dinner and services, and plenty of time to relax and connect.

*A warm, diverse community with Jews of every age, LGBT identity, and religious affiliation-all invested in sustaining local LGBT Jewish community.

The Shabbaton is co-sponsored by Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, The Jewish Community Federation of SF LGBT Alliance, and the Jewish Progressive Alliance.

Sasha T. Goldberg

Sasha T. Goldberg is the Associate Director and Director of Student Programming for Nehirim. She holds a Master’s Degree in Judaism from the Graduate Theological Union, and has taught nationally on the intersections of Judaism and cultural, social, sexual, and religious identities. In addition to her work at Nehirim, Sasha has organized events for a myriad of LGBT and social justice causes, provided consulting on LGBT student life for her alma mater, The Latin School of Chicago, and served as a writing consultant for The Nyaka Aids Orphans Project and Muslims for Progressive Values. Sasha’s recent work appears in anthologies including Keep Your Wives Away From Them and Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme. Currently, Sasha serves as a member of the GLBT Advisory Committee for the Jewish National Fund, and as the Programming Chair for Butch Voices 2011. To her great joy, she was recently selected as one of the 2010-2011 Jeremiah Fellows by the Progressive Jewish Alliance. Previously, Sasha served as the President of the Board of Directors for NUJLS, The National Union of Jewish LGBTQQI Students, before Nehirim and NUJLS merged in June of 2010. Sasha hails from the good Midwestern stock of the United States, and makes her home in Oakland, California.

Zvi Bellin PhD

Dr. Zvi Bellin is the Engagement Associate for Nehirim and is responsible for pastoral counseling, community relations, and programming at Nehirim retreats. He leads workshops and directs retreats that integrate body-heart-mind-soul in a variety of spiritual and religious contexts. Zvi earned a PhD in Pastoral Counseling and an M.A. in Counseling and Guidance. He is a Registered Yoga Teacher with the Yoga Alliance. He has worked as a therapist in a number of mental health settings, and has interned as a Psychiatric Chaplain. In addition to his work with Nehirim, Zvi is the Director of Jewish Education for Moishe House.

David Dunn Bauer

David Dunn Bauer served as rabbi of the Jewish Community of Amherst from 2003-2010 after a 15-year career as a stage manager and stage director of theater and opera in the U.S., Europe, and Israel. Prior to his ordination, Rabbi Bauer served for two years as the spiritual leader of Congregation Ahavath Shalom, a Reconstructionist congregation in Great Barrington, MA. As a student in Israel in 1999, led regular Torah study at the Jerusalem Open House. He was a 2000-2001 Cooperberg-Rittmaster intern at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in NYC. Rabbi Bauer received training in pastoral counseling as a rabbinical intern at the Philadelphia Geriatric Center in 1998 and 1999. With life coach Michael J. Cohen, he created and led “Celebrating the Body Judaic: a Body Electric Shabbaton for Gay and Bisexual Jewish Men” in 2006 and 2007. Rabbi Bauer teaches on subjects ranging from opera and Jewish theatre to sexuality and images of the body in Jewish liturgy and sacred text.

Michael Hopkins

Michael Hopkins is the Executive Director of Nehirim. Michael has devoted over thirty years to building inclusive Jewish community. He holds an MSW from the Yeshiva University Wurzweiler School of Social Work, and spent the majority of his professional career directing and growing Jewish Community Centers across the country. Most recently, he was executive director of JCC Metrowest, one of the largest JCC’s in the country with an $18 million budget and over 100 full and part time staff. He is also a key lay leader and volunteer at Hazon and at Easton Mountain, the gay men’s retreat and residential community in upstate New York. Michael brings to his leadership of Nehirim both this extensive background in helping Jewish nonprofits reach their full potential and his personal journey as a gay Jewish man whose life has been personally impacted by Nehirim.

Ali Cannon

Ali Michael Cannon is a writer, organizer, activist, and public speaker. As a recognized leader in the transgender community, he has been invited to speak on various panels and organized numerous conferences and events for the Jewish, LGBT and Queer Jewish communities. His writing has been published in From the Inside Out: Radical Gender Transformation, FTM and Beyond. His provocative illumination of Jewish and transgender themes can be seen in the film, It’s A Boy: Journeys from Female to Male and his essay (co-authored with TJ Michels), Whose Side Are You On: Transgender at the Western Wall. (Queer Jews, Routledge, 2002 and republished in Kulanu: All of Us: A Program and Resource Guide for GLBT Inclusion, URJ Press, 2007). Cannon founded the theater group, Transmen Tell Their Tales, and was a long time writer, performer, and producer of Chutzpah – a Queer Jewish theater group in San Francisco.

Professionally, Mr. Cannon worked as a non-profit manager for 20 years. He has spent the past three years as a School District Administrator, managing state and federal grants that improve the lives of youth without equal access to education. He has a BA and MA in Women Studies. Currently he serves on the Board of Our Family Coalition. He is also a member of the Planning and Advisory Group of the LGBT Alliance and chairs the Trans Task Force. A proud father and husband - he lives in Oakland with his wife, Jessica, an Oakland Public School teacher, and their six-year old son.

Sarah Lefton

Sarah Lefton is the Founding Director of G-dcast. Her work is a fusion of a decidedly oddball career that started out in digital entertainment and online publishing (The New York Times, The Village Voice, plus numerous lifestyle and celebrity clients) and ended up in Jewish community building (Camp Tawonga, the JCCSF, the Mission Minyan.)

Sarah was named one of the Forward 50 most influential Jews of 2009, and is a recipient of the Joshua Venture Group fellowship for Jewish social entrepreneurs. She was a guest of the Obamas at the 2010 reception at the White House for Jewish Heritage Month.