photo credit: K’Ketzirah Lesser
The Torah is meant to be ours, and yet so often we feel like it is taboo to be close to her. In this course we will acquire skills to look into the Torah and find personal and communal meaning from the weekly parsha (Torah portion). Participants will leave this course with the skill of leading group aliyot, or Torah callings, for their community.
Sarah Chandler aka Kohenet Shamirah is a Brooklyn-based Jewish educator, artist, activist, healer, and poet. She has been teaching Jewish eco-ritual weaving for over 15 years. She holds a M.A. in Jewish Education and a M.A. in Hebrew Bible from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a certificate in Non-Profit Management and Jewish Communal Leadership from Columbia University. She teaches, writes and consults on a national level on issues related to Judaism, earth-based spiritual practice, mindfulness, dreamwork, and farming. An advanced student of Kabbalistic dream work at The School of Images, Sarah is the founder and lead trainer for "Soft as a Rock: Public Speaking for Sensitive Souls." softasarock.com
Join us in Weaving Restorative Practices to learn frameworks that can be used towards a more equitable and just future for the Jewish community and beyond. Kohenet Shoshana A Brown, LMSW will use their 8 years of restorative justice practices in various community and educational settings to share about the history, frameworks, and applications of these practices.
Through the experiential learning and the study of primary sources, case studies, and guest lecturers, participants will cultivate a firm understanding of Restorative Justice and knowledge of how to integrate these tools into their life work.
This 8-week self-directed practicum invites and supports us to cultivate a being-ness that is aligned with our essential self, our gifts, and with Source. Explore right pace, inhabit space, be guided by gratitude and become fluent in state transmission. Embodied Presence engages simple and potent exercises and inquires to activate awareness, to strengthen and supply our sensory selves and to empower our embodied presence. Concentrated content is made available each week in the virtual classroom in both audio and print form.
Session 1 - Presencing Pace
Session 2 - Presencing Grace & Gratitude
Session 3 - Presencing Space
Session 4 - Presencing Place & Elementals
Session 5 - Presencing Soma
Session 6 - Presencing State
Session 7 - Presencing Form & Flow
Session 8 - Presencing Completion
Session recordings are 15-20 minutes each, not including pausing to practice the exercises. The exercises consist of:
Tuning into one's body
Somatic explorations
Exploring specific activities in your space
Journaling & responding to prompts
Sefer Yetzirah is an ancient and foundational work of Jewish mysticism. This brief and cryptic book imagines letters as the building blocks of the universe, and focuses our attention on the components of space, time, and soul and the elements of air, fire, and water. Its goal is to allow adepts to contemplate, and even partake in, the Divine creative process. We will be reading sections from the book closely in order to understand the practices of Sefer Yetzirah and their potential role in an earth-based, feminist, contemporary Jewish belief and contemplative practice. We will also be using the book to meditate and reflect on our own spiritual experience.
Faces of Shekhinah with Rabbi Jill Hammer/Rav Kohenet Ye’ilah explores biblical, talmudic, and mystical texts related to faces of the Divine Feminine across Jewish history, and invites participants to experience these faces of the Divine through visualization. The course includes biweekly lectures, texts to explore, and guided meditations. Times to be announced. Lectures are recorded for later listening.
Session 1 - The Divine Glory: Shekhinah in Exodus and the Talmud
Session 2 - Lady Wisdom and the Book of Proverbs
Session 3 - Shekhinah as Exiled Woman: The Midrash
Session 4 - Shekhinah as Divine Daughter
Session 5 - The Cosmic Mother: Divine Feminine as Womb
Session 6 - Shekhinah as Lover: The Sabbath Bride
Session 7 - Shekhinah as World: Divine Feminine as All That Is
Where can we find priestess role models in the Hebrew Bible? What are the practices, skills, or approaches we could learn from them? From Miriam to Tamar, from Chanah to Devorah, from Tziporah to Samson’s mother, discover sacred moments in the stories of prophets and wise women, dedicants and holy outcasts. We’ll look at the Bible, midrash, archaeology and our own imaginings to deepen our understanding of biblical priestessing.
On Solid Ground: Fundamentals of Judaism is an exploration of the foundations of Judaism through a feminist lens, providing us a stable place from which to learn, study, practice, lead, create, ritualize and diverge. This class will include inquiries into traditional/historical practice in comparison and contrast to Priestess practice. This class is intended for anyone who wants to learn the basics of Jewish practice, history and tradition (including folx who are considering conversion) as well as anyone who is keen to reconsider the basics from an anti-oppressionist perspective. This class is open to Kohenet students and alumni as well as others interested in engaging with the Basics of Judaism through a Priestessing lens. Sessions are held via Zoom
Session 1 - Intro Session: What is Our Starting Point?
Session 2 - What is Judaism? Who are Jews? Lineages, Denominations, and Sages
Session 3 - Who are Jews? Lineages, Denominations, and Sages
Session 4 - Where are Jews? How did they get to be all over the world? (taught by Rav Kohenet Shoshana Batshemesh Jedwab)
Session 5 - Jewish Herstory: The Grand Narrative (taught by Rav Kohenet Shoshana Batshemesh Jedwab)
Session 6 - Torah and Other Sacred Texts
Session 7 - Jewish Days and Time Cycles
Session 8 - Sacred Time: Sabbath through Havdallah
Session 9 - Jewish Holidays: An Overview of the Jewish Year
Session 10 - Jewish Holidays: The Pilgrimages
Session 11 - Worship: Daily Rhythms and their Liturgy
Session 12 - Judaism at Home: Ritual Items and Customs
Session 13 - Jewish Life Spirals
The Wheel of the Year is a monthly Virtual Temple class presenting an earth-based view of the Jewish calendar, including ancient practices and modern customs, and explores Kohenet-resonant ways to create meaningful holiday ritual. This ten-month class includes readings, recorded lectures, an online discussion forum, audio guides for embodied practice, and ritual and liturgy for each festival season. This class serves as a holiday community where students post about their holiday experiences and practices and share their questions and ideas. Required texts are The Jewish Book of Days by Jill Hammer and Seasons of Our Joy by Arthur Waskow. Additional material is also posted and assigned.
Session 1 - Cycles of the Sun and Moon
Session 2 - Chanukah
Session 3 - Tu b’Shevat
Session 4 - Purim
Session 5 - Passover
Session 6 - The Journey of the Omer
Session 7 - Shavuot and the First Fruits
Session 8 - Tisha b’Av
Session 9 - Rosh haShanah & Yom Kippur
Session 10 - Sukkot
Jewish Ancestral Healing Journey is a multi-week journey taught by Taya Mâ. It includes content material on Jewish ancestor reverence practices and a group immersion into the Ancestral Lineage Healing process. Join us to engage in:
Weekly lessons on Jewish ancestor reverence practices. Our areas of exploration include working with stones, yahrtzeit practices of remembering, the ancestralization practice of Mourner’s Kaddish, the pilgrimage practice of Hillula and more. Lessons are delivered through audio recording and identical transcribed text.
Weekly group Zoom video calls guiding participants through a process of Ancestral Lineage Healing. Our sessions, guided by Taya Mâ, include an orientation to the protocols we’ll engage, an assessment of participants’ four primary blood/family lineages, welcoming connection with an ancestral guide, and building relationship with your guide to anchor blessing for you and healing for one of your family lineages.
In Jewish Dreamwork, we’ll explore Jewish dream practices and also consider dream practice from an elemental, earth-based perspective, learning about the teachers, healers, guardians, blessings, and warnings that dreams present to us. Carefully observing places, signs, and visitations within our dreams, we’ll consider how dreams ask us to live deeply and mindfully. We’ll convene dream circles and delve into one another’s dreams to find blessing, healing, and life-wisdom. The course will have live meetings with lectures and dream circles and also an opportunity to post dreams online and receive comments. Students in the class may have the opportunity for one or more private sessions with the instructor for an additional fee.
Session 1 - The Dream Journey as a Spiritual Practice
Session 2 - Portals in our Dreams
Session 3 - Guardians in Our Dreams
Session 4 - Healing in Our Dreams
Session 5 - Healing in Our Nightmares
Session 6 - Ancestor Healing in Our Dreams
Session 7 - Sacred Union in Our Dream
Practice Makes Imperfect emerges from Taya Mâ’s two decades teaching transformative ritual and from her struggles and successes in realms of tending the creative sacred and in rocking (and not) the basic building blocks of life.
This course is for you if you know how you most want to feel, or what you most want to create, yet are still clarifying or wrestling with how to actually get there. Our journey focuses on showing up fully inside the myriad micromovements that shape living into a large life.
This class is lecture/transmission and Q&A based, with content delivered weekly in the course portal and on our weekly live integration calls. Practice Makes Imperfect is experientially focused, and invites accountability in ways that are most resonant for you. Our curriculum is iterative, in response to what emerges in our communal container. You’ll get the most out of this journey if you actually do the homework ;) — and you are welcome even if not doing homework is the main thing you wrestle with.
In Sex and the Sephirot, we’ll engage the seven-week Omer period between Passover and Shavuot toward experiencing greater erotic presence, deepening our commitment to sex that is nourishing and healthful for us, and embracing ritual practices of self-pleasure - or pleasure with partners - amidst the support and container of sex-positive community and joyful accountability. We’ll work with the sephirot through an embodied pelvic mapping of the kabbalistic tree of life created specifically for this course.
This offering is for you if: You have a pattern around self-pleasure or sex with partners that you want to transform. You feel excited - and perhaps a little nervous - about being held in a lovingly tended group container to additionally integrate the sacred into your erotic life. You desire to claim pleasure as prayer.
This multi-week journey includes weekly teachings delivered by audio and text, three collective video calls which are a combination of teaching and personal check-in's, and optional chevrutah connection with a classmate.
This course is for people of all gender expressions & bodies. Our frame is Jewishly rooted, and this course is open across faith practices - no background in Judaism necessary. The course requires a clearly stated commitment to confidentiality, in support of the depth and vulnerability of our work.
A virtual immersion in Kohenet learning, practice, and community, distinct from our ordination program. Participants will journey through a year of Kohenet learning together in a dedicated cohort while also having opportunities to connect with the wider Kohenet community through check-ins and prayer gatherings. Through this program, participants will have the opportunity to gain knowledge and skills toward spiritual transformation, deepen personal practice and become part of the Kohenet community. This immersive program is a powerful way to connect to Kohenet community, encounter Kohenet-style prayer and sacred practice, and learn from a variety of Kohenot.
