Emanuella aka Dr. Emily Leah Silverman is a scholar activist, knowledge seeker, visionary, healer, space holder, bridge builder, ritual leader and traveler of the interior and exterior realms.
Emily is currently the interim V.P of programming at the American Academy of Religion Western Region. The theme for 2021 : Religious Studies after COVID-19: The Role of Religion in Times of Pandemic, Sustainability, Marginalized Communities, and Social & Economic Justice. She has been AAR/WR Past President previous V.P. of programming in 2014.
She is the Bay Area organizer Global Teach IN 2020 Democratize the Crisis She has worked and coordinated with activistas from over 20 countries from 5 continents working together with them to democratize post covid, climate change, health care and inequality .
Emily is an invited national speaker on the theology of Spiritual Resistance of Rabbi Regina Jonas the first woman Rabbi and Edith Stein St Theresa Benedicta of the Cross. Some of her speaking engagements have included the Program in Spirituality at Florida International University, Miami Florida, Pepperdine University Malibu CA , Assumption College Worcester Mass, the Dedication of Edith Stein personal family papers by her niece Suzanne Bartzdorf to the Florence Lamson Hewlett Library, Berkeley CA
She has written a groundbreaking book Edith Stein and Regina Jonas: Religious Visionary in the Time of the Death Camps Routledge Publishing Her book intersects the field of queer studies, feminist theory and theology, Jewish and Catholic Women and the Holocaust Emily has organized the Festschrift for Rosemary Radford Ruether and Co-edited Voices of Feminist Liberation: Writing in Celebration of Rosemary Radford Ruether Rougledge Publishing Her next book is a co edited volume with Sudanese Muslim Feminist Souad T Ali Subjugated Voices and Religion with Equinox publishing.
Emily has been national evaluator for American Academy of Religion Holocaust, Genocide and Religion group and was on the national steering committee for Feminist Lesbian Studies in Religion group at American Academy of Religion. She has presented papers nationally at American Academy of Religion, National Women's Studies Association, International Medieval Congress and Hebrew Professors Association
She has taught women studies seminars at the Graduate Theological Union Women and Religion Center, she has been a Dorot Fellow studying archeology in Israel, Newhall Fellow teaching a seminar on Jewish Feminisms and has taught at San Jose State University in the Humanities Dept. Emily has also taught at Lehrhuas Judica Meditation and kabbalah She was an oral history interviewer for Northern California Holocaust Center
Emily holds a B.A from Bard College in the History and Philosophy of Science a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School and PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies of Religion from a joint program of Graduate Theological Union and UC Berkeley
Emanuella is trained as a Theta Healing Practitioner, and has just co-founded The Institute for the Unseen Arts. Emanuella enjoys swimming with the Dolphin Club in the San Francisco Bay, hiking, taking photos and gardening. She lives with her family in Ramakush Ohlone lands ( San Francisco) . Emanuella has felt her calling to Kohenet from the age of three when she first saw the Ancient Near Eastern Map of Ancient Cannan and Israel on the wall in Hebrew school and knew she had been a kohenet in previous incarnations. She thanks the Rav Kohenot and cohort Alef for manifesting and reclaiming Kohenet.