Nehirim West 2010
Save the Date:
Nehirim West, April 16-18, 2010
Walker Creek Ranch, Petaluma, CA
Information about Nehirim West 2010 will be posted in December, 2009.
In the meantime, below is the page for Nehirim West 2009, for informational purposes.
Nehirim’s second annual West Coast Retreat is only one month away!
Directed by soon-to-be-Rabbi Dev Noily, a longtime resident of San Francisco, Nehirim West is a weekend of community-building, spirituality, culture, activism, and fun for GLBT Jews, partners, and allies. Rates begin at $200 including room & board. Click here to register now.
Nehirim West features:
- A truly diverse community: ranging in age from 18-73, orthodox to atheist; gay men, lesbians, genderqueers, bisexuals, transgender folk, straight allies; singles, families, couples (including many non-Jewish partners); radical faeries and nice Jewish boys; suits and radicals; this is a community like no other.
- Spirituality from traditional shabbat davening to meditation, yoga, and dance; Hasidic melodies and alternative ritual; secular Torah study and honoring the Divine Feminine. No Hebrew knowledge required.
- Workshops and seminars featuring a wide range of teachers, community members, and facilitators. Workshop topics range from political activism to personal narrative, Jewish text study to performance.
- More than ever before: full scholarships for students, full scholarships for Bay Area residents sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, 50% and full-price subsidies for those in financial need, and more. Please click this link to learn more.
Tachlis: Costs, Transportation, etc.
Registration and Costs
Registering is easy: Click here to register Online Now!
We are committed to enabling everyone to attend Nehirim West, and recognize that times are tough for all of us right now. We’ve slashed our prices in order to enable as many people to attend as possible. In addition, student scholarships and financial assistance are both available on a first-come, first-served basis. We also have a special scholarship for residents of the Bay Area, thanks to a generous grant from the Jewish Community Foundation of San Francisco. Click here to apply.
2009 prices are as follows:
| Price | |
| Dorm-Style Room (price per person) | $200 |
| Triple Room (price per person) | $340 |
| Double Room (price per person) | $375 |
| Single Room (price per person) | $450 |
| Child (age 4-11) | $50 |
| Child (age 0-3) | Free |
Transportation
Walker Creek Ranch is in Petaluma, CA. For driving directions, please visit the Walker Creek Ranch website. To offer or request a ride to the retreat, visit our Ride Board.
We want to make sure out-of-towners have transportation to the retreat-so if you offer a ride to an out-of-towner, we will give you a $25 rebate on your registration fee. Simply post your ride on the ride board, and let us know at the retreat that you brought an out-of-towner with you.
If you are unable to find a ride to the retreat and are looking for ideas about how to get there, the Oakland Airport website is a good place to start. If you don’t want to take a taxi all the way from San Francisco to Walker Creek Ranch, you can look into public transportation options. The Trip Planner site is a helpful resource. Just enter your starting location (for example, the San Francisco Airport) and your ending location (Walker Creek Ranch, 1700 Marshall Petaluma Rd., Petaluma, CA), and the site will show you which BART train and buses to take.
Logistical Questions?
Ask us at info[at]nehirim.org.
Tentative 2009 Schedule
Friday
2:30 Arrival Begins & Registration Opens
3:30-4:15 Welcome & Opening Program
4:15-4:30 Orientation to Walker Creek Ranch
4:30-4:45 Time to Prepare, Change for Shabbat
4:45-5:30 Preparing for Shabbat (choose one)
-Walking Meditation
-Discussion about our Diverse Shabbat Practices
5:30-7:30 Candlelighting & Kabbalat Shabbat Services (Rabbi Joshua Lesser & Dev Noily)
-Kabbalat Shabbat will include singing and drumming.
-Ma’ariv (Evening Prayers) will be without instruments.
7:30-9:00 Shabbat Dinner
9:00-9:45 Mishpacha Groups
10:00 Evening Activity
-Shabbos Tish with Zvi
-Informal Schmooze Time
Saturday
7:30-8:30 Yoga space and Meditation space
8:00-9:30 Breakfast
9:30-10:30 Morning Spiritual Practice part 1 (please choose one)
-Nature Walk/Wandering outdoor service (Lisa Finkelstein & Ora Prochovnick)
-Traditional-Egalitarian Shabbat Service (Rabbi Julia Watts-Belser)
-Contemplative/Meditative Service (Rabbi Elliot Rose Kukla & Karen Erlichman)
10:35-11:50 Morning Spiritual Practice part 2: Torah Service (Rabbi Camille Angel & Andrew Ramer)
12:00-1:15 Lunch
1:30-2:30 Workshop Session I (please choose one)
-The One-Hour Klezmer Band (Ilana Sherer)
-Gender Diversity in the Talmud: Meet the Tumtum and Androgynos (texts in English) (Max Strassfeld)
-Yoga (Zvi Bellin)
-Counting the Omer as a Spiritual Practice (Rabbi Joshua Lesser)
2:45-3:45 Workshop Session II (please choose one)
-Shmi’at haNefesh (Listening of the Soul): Jewish Spiritual Direction with Queer Jews (Karen Erlichman)
-The Art of Book Making (Ruby Cymrot-Wu)
-Beyond Marriage: Alternative Legal and Social Models for LGBT Families (Ora Prochovnick)
-Let’s Go Outside & Play! (Rabbi Joshua Lesser)
4:00-4:45 Afternoon Snack or Facilitated Conversation Circles (topics TBA)
5:00-6:00 Workshop Session III (please choose one)
-The Queer Art of Jewish Storytelling (Rabbi Camille Angel)
-Sacred Ecologies: God/dess, Earth, and Eros in the Song of Songs (Rabbi Julia Watts-Belser)
-Mensches, Mama’s Boys, and Machers: A Discussion on Jewish Masculinity (Sasha T. Goldberg)
-More than Twice Blessed (Corey Friedlander)
6:15-7:45 Dinner
7:45-8:30 Mishpacha Groups
8:45 Ma’ariv and Havdalah, followed by Campfire, Storytelling, Singing, and S’mores
Sunday
8:00-9:30 Breakfast
9:15-10:00 Morning Spiritual Practice
-Traditional/Egalitarian Service (self-led)
-Meditation (Ri J. Turner)
10:15-11:30 Workshop Session IV (please choose one)
-Writing Queer Liturgy (Andrew Ramer)
-Queer Jews in 2009 (Caryn Aviv)
-Fabric Arts for the Omer Season (Ri J. Turner)
-Gender Diversity in the Talmud: Meet the Tumtum and Androgynos (texts in Hebrew) (Max Strassfeld)
11:30-12:15 Mishpacha Groups
12:30-2:00 Closing and Lunch
Our Teachers for 2009
Dev Felder Noily, Retreat Director
Dev Felder Noily is a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia (class of ‘09). She develops readings of Jewish text and tradition to serve queer Jewish lives. A long-time member of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav in San Francisco, Dev has served as a student rabbi there, as well as for LGBT-founded Jewish communities in Atlanta, GA and Amsterdam, Netherlands. She currently offers spiritual care in the transgender communities of Philadelphia, as an Albert Schweitzer Fellow, and serves as rabbinic intern at Congregation Beth El of Bennington, VT. Dev also works with the Jewish Dialogue Group, facilitating conversations about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other controversial issues.
Rabbi Joshua Lesser leads Atlanta’s growing Congregation Bet Haverim as a place dedicated to celebrating all aspects of Jewish life and creating a spiritual home that is accessible to those who have not connected in other settings. As a former Teach For America corps member, Rabbi Lesser is committed to creating innovative programs and events to further their Jewish education in fun and exciting ways. At Bet Haverim, he has worked with a wide variety of groups and coalitions to build a better community for Atlanta, including the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta’s Task Force on Healing and Spirituality. In partnership with the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta and Jewish Family & Career Services, he founded The Rainbow Center, a place of support and information for GLBTQ people, as well as their families.
Rabbi Julia Watts Belser 
Julia Watts Belser strives to blend passionate scholarship with prophetic witness, teaching classic Jewish texts in a way that speak to our contemporary longings. Julia has taught in diverse university, synagogue, and community-based settings, including the Graduate Theological Union, The Leaven Center for Spirituality and Social Change, and the Masorti Lehrhaus in Berlin, Germany. Julia’s written work is engaged in crafting feminist theology and nurturing earth-based Jewish practice. She works as an anti-oppression educator and activist for LGBT issues, anti-racism, and disability rights. She has co-authored A Health Handbook for Women with Disabilities, published by Hesperian Foundation.
Rabbi Elliot Rose Kukla
Rabbi Elliot Rose Kukla has been an activist, writer and educator for more than a decade. He has taught widely about sexual and gender diversity in Judaism in the US, Canada and Israel. His writing appears in and is upcoming from numerous magazines including Lilith, Shm’a: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility and Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Art and Culture, as well as in anthologies published by New York University Press, Jewish Lights and the Union for Reform Judaism Press. For the last 2 years, Elliot served as the rabbi of the Danforth Jewish Circle, in Toronto, Canada, a congregation grounded in social justice and inclusion. Elliot was the Rabbinic Organizer of Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) in LA.
Rabbi Camille Angel
Rabbi Camille Angel was ordained at the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in New York. In 2000, she became the rabbi of Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, a prominent LGBT synagogue in San Francisco, after serving as Associate Rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom on the Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Rabbi Angel has been a guest lecturer at the HUC-JIR in Practical Rabbinics and a Scholar-in-Residence for Women of Reform Judaism. She has written widely on creative liturgy, Judaism, and women. Her work has been published in the Journal of Psychology and Judaism, Walt Disney/Ideal Books, and other magazines as well as academic journals and books.
Dr. Caryn Aviv
Caryn Aviv is the director of research for Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity. She is also the Posen Lecturer in Secular Jewish Culture in the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver, where she directs the Certificate Program in Jewish Communal Service and teaches courses about contemporary Jewish communities. Caryn is the co-author of American Queer: Now and Then (Paradigm Publishers 2006), New Jews: The End of the Jewish Diaspora (New York University Press 2005), and Queer Jews (Routledge 2002). Caryn is currently working on a book project that examines the role of American Jews in Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation movements, media, and philanthropy. She also writes an occasional blog about queer Jewish life forHa’aretz.
Ora Prochovnick
Ora Prochovnick is a professor and clinical director at John F Kennedy University School of Law. She was a partner and founding member of Bayside Legal Advocates, a woman-run community law office in the Mission District of San Francisco, where for ten years her practice focused on tenant advocacy, nontraditional family law, police misconduct cases and civil rights litigation. She is a member of the Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom, the National Lawyers Guild and the National Lesbian and Gay Law Association. She has previously served on the board of directors of the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, and is currently on the “brain trust” committee of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. She was named a Northern California Super Lawyer by San Francisco Magazine in 2004 and 2005, and received the Transgender Law Center’s 2008 Community Ally award.
Ruby Cymrot-Wu
Ruby Cymrot-Wu works in community organizing with several progressive Jewish organizations advocating for LGBTQ rights, including Jewish Mosaic. Ruby also develops youth empowerment curricula to provide multi-issue political education to Elementary, Middle, and High School students. As a long time volunteer with COLAGE, she has been an advocate for children and adults with LGBTQ parents through panels, media interviews, and youth leadership.
Max K. Strassfeld
Max K. Strassfeld is a genderqueer activist, working towards a doctoral degree on transgender and intersex categories in the Talmud at Stanford University. He has taught classes on queer Talmud and gender diversity in Judaism, sex positivity, and sexual communication (when he was a sex educator at Good Vibrations), and workshops on the intersection of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Ze enjoys book binding and letterpress printing (as well as crafts of all kinds), and cooking ridiculous amounts of food.
Day Schildkret
Day Schildkret is the Director of Tri–Valley/Tri–Cities Midrasha in Berkeley. He has has worked in Jewish education on both the East and West Coasts for over a decade. Day has a B.A. in Judaic Studies and Political Science from Binghamton University and has studied at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Art Student League in New York. He has directed on Broadway, produced television and worked in politics.
Andrew Ramer
Andrew Ramer lives in San Francisco. He writes a column, “Praxis,” for the gay men’s spirituality journal, White Crane. He is the author of the groundbreaking gay classic,Two Flutes Playing and his next book, Queering the Text: Biblical, Medieval, and Modern Jewish Stories, is forthcoming from Suspect Thoughts Press.
Karen Erlichman
Karen Lee Erlichman, MSS, LCSW is a licensed clinical social worker in private practice in San Francisco, where she provides psychotherapy and spiritual direction. Karen is also the director of Jewish Mosaic’s San Francisco Bay area office. She is a past co-chair of the Jewish Women’s Caucus of the Association for Women in Psychology, and a current member of Spiritual Directors International.
Plus these members of Nehirim’s core staff and faculty:
Jay Michaelson, Executive Director
Jay Michaelson is the founder and Executive Director of Nehirim. He is also among the most widely-read Jewish writers of his generation, as a columnist for the Forward, a featured contributor to the Huffington Post, the Founding Editor of Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture, and the author of God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness and Embodied Spiritual Practice (Jewish Lights, 2006) and Another Word for Sky: Poems (Lethe Press, 2007). A recent visiting professor at Boston University law school, Jay holds a J.D. from Yale teaches widely on issues of religion and sexuality; his work in the area has been featured in the New York Times and on NPR. Recent publications on the subject include “Queering God, Torah, and Israel” in The Passionate Torah (2009), “Chaos, Law and God: The Religious Meaning of Homosexuality” in the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, and “Boundaries and the Boundless: Homosexuality, Liminality, Judaism” in Jews and Sex (2008).
Sasha T. Goldberg, Assistant Director
Currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Judaism at The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Sasha takes a hands-on approach to integrating social justice into the curriculum of Jewish learning, teaching, and practice, with a long history of advocacy, spanning grass-roots to board room. Her other areas of interest include the intersections between religious and secular practices of Judaism, and finding ways to draw in the unaffiliated. Out in the queer world, Sasha has organized conferences, film festivals, presentations, and workshops, and she has spoken extensively on sexuality, gender and identity.
Zvi Bellin, Engagement Associate
Zvi Bellin 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. He is a co-founder of the Silver Spring Moishe House, a Jewish community house sponsored by the Schusterman Foundation.
Ri J. Turner, Operations Manager
Ri J. Turner holds a bachelor of arts in anthropology from Cornell University, and has been involved with LGBTQ organizing since her/zir junior year of high school. She/ze has always felt deeply pulled by Jewish learning and community, and alongside her/zir work with Nehirim, she/ze is currently engaged with the Kohenet program, a Jewish women’s spiritual leadership training institute, and is on the board of NUJLS, the National Union of Jewish LGBTIQQ Students. Ri is also profoundly committed to intersectional anti-oppression work-anti-racism in particular-and believes in the potential of education, both formal and informal, to transform society.
Questions?
If you would like more information, if you would like to volunteer to teach or lead services, or if your organization would like to cosponsor the retreat, you can always email us at info[at]nehirim.org.