Massachusetts

Batya Diamond

she/her

www.batyadiamond.com

I am a singer/songwriter, spiritual leader, educator and activist based in Vineyard Haven, MA. The songs I write are evocative and uplifting, with themes touching on loss, survival and connecting with the Divine. I work with organizations in my community and beyond to alleviate food insecurity, protect voting and reproductive rights, and to support local musicians. You can find my latest CD, “Infinite Wisdom: Chants of the Divine Feminine” at batyadiamond.bandcamp.com and my music videos on YouTube at Batya Diamond Music.

Socials: @batya_diamond

Joanna Kent Katz

Joanna Kent Katz is a social justice educator, intuitive healer, drama therapist, youth worker, Theater of the Oppressed practitioner, circle keeper and rite of passage ritualist. She is a political educator who centers healing and a healing practitioner who believes in collective liberation.

Jo practices the art of deep tending. Harvesting directly the wisdom of Ancestors and Guides, she serves as witness to, container for and catalyst of profound transformation of embodied paths and ancestral legacies. Jo supports clients in building their capacity to interrupt patterns of oppression, attending to the healing required to release ourselves, and one another, from our unconscious allegiance to systems that hold us captive, availing us to imagine and embody the world we long for.

As an educator, Jo creates and facilitates dynamic, liberatory anti-oppression trainings, supporting youth and young-adult leaders around the country to strengthen themselves as agents of social change.

Joanna holds a Masters degree in Social Justice Education from University of Massachusetts, Amherst and is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor with a degree in Counseling Psychology/Drama Therapy from California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. Her garlic is currently planted on occupied land originally stewarded by the Nipmuc, Nonotuc and Pocomtuc Peoples, known by settlers as Northampton, Massachusetts.

Batya Diamond

Batya is a songwriter and mystic, teacher and spiritual leader. A native of Brooklyn, NY, Batya’s earliest days at Hebrew day school inspired her love of Jewish learning, music and ritual. She is a skilled communicator with a sharp sense of humor, whose journey to becoming a Kohenet wound through spells as a lawyer, private investigator, radio personality, and stay-at-home-mom.

Along the way, Batya has been writing, recording and performing her original songs and chants, weaving ancient wisdom with accessible teachings in English and Hebrew. Intimacy and playfulness with both languages allow Batya to discover hidden connections and deeper spiritual meaning, which she helps bring to light with her music. Whether holding b’mitzvah or high holiday services, women’s seders, healing and new moon circles, teaching the aleph-bet or studying kabbalah, Batya brings an easeful, attentive presence to the journey of those with whom she is engaged.

Batya is delighted to have received smicha in her 60th year as the culmination of a lifetime of Jewish learning, spiritual practice, ritual, parenting, creativity and community-building. She is deeply grateful to her teachers and ancestors, to the dear ones who lovingly care for her, and to this holy Kohenet community.

Mimi Rhys

Maryam discovered drums and fell in love with them at the age of 9, after which her parents in self-defense got her to take lessons at the age of 10. She graduated from playing with sticks to playing with her hands in her 30s, and after joining B’nai Or was allowed the honor of playing for her congregation. Now she is a sacred drummer and plays for 4 Jewish congregations and one coven, as well as other Jewish groups. 

Maryam is a Jew by choice who has avidly embraced Jewish Renewal since 2001. She is also an initiated Wiccan priestess of over 20 year’s standing in the Alexandrian tradition. She finds that each tradition enriches the other and is a member of both SOPHIA coven and B’nai Or of Boston, the third oldest Jewish Renewal congregation. 

Maryam has been on a healing journey from trauma and has used the wisdom she has gained to help others along that path. She has studied bodywork, trauma release techniques, shamanic work with Kohenet Tiana Mirapae, and reiki over the past 15 years. She opened her practice, Phoenix Healing Arts in 2007 to enable her to offer her clients many possible roads to health. She weaves together healing in all four worlds of the body, heart, mind and soul to help clear pain and trauma for those who come to her for care. She sees the whole person both in this life and in past lives. To this end she utilizes shamanic journeying to reunite lost parts of body or soul with the current selves of her clients.

She is continuing studies in shamanism and aromatherapy to expand her offerings.

Dori Midnight

Dori Midnight practices community- based intuitive healing that weaves plant and stone medicine, ancestral and queer magic, and liberation work. Drawing on ancestral wisdom from her Sephardi and Ashkenazi lineage, Dori’s work is supported by a web of teachers, healers, dreamers, witches, plants and stones, wild and wise ones rooted in disability and healing justice work, queer liberation, and Earth based Judaism. 

Ordained as an interfaith minister and spiritual counselor from the New Seminary in NYC in 2005 and trained as a clinical and energetic herbalist, Dori’s work is grounded in self-determinism and love. Dori offers in person and long distance intuitive healing, teaches workshops on Jewish plant magic, healing for apocalyptic times, and queer magic, and crafts ritual and remedies for helping heal wounds of trauma, oppression and disconnection. 

Dori also weaves collaborative, reverent and irreverant, joyous and deep ritual with Nishmat Shoom, a radical, queer, non-Zionist minyan project, organizes with Jewish Voice for Peace, a Palestinian solidarity organization, and tends to and is tended by her gardens, family, and community on Nipmuc/Nonotuck/Pocumtuck land, known by settlers as Northampton, Massachusetts.

Judith Breier

she/they

Into the Deep:
I am a Life Legacy Letter Writing facilitator and certified Sage-ing facilitator from Sage-ing International and end-of-life doula. The focus of the way I am in service is to support people in doing life completion work using age-ing as a time for deep reflection and spiritual growth
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Legacy letter writing or leaving a legacy is an important part of life completion work. Life Legacy Letter writing is an easy way to share your stories, values, and memories with those whom you love and to future generations. They articulate how you have made meaning of specific events in your life, what you’ve learned, and the values that were highlighted through decisions that were made or not made but learned in the process. It is a way to bridge the past with the future allowing you to be seen, to be known, to bless others and yourself, to be remembered, to make a positive difference, and to celebrate your life and finally, to be a good ancestor. In addition to legacy work, I also run workshops on expanding elder consciousness, life review, forgiveness, healing relationships, and embracing our mortality.

Tiana Mirapae

Tiana Mirapae is the Founder, Director & High Priestess of The Wisdom School & Temple of S.O.P.H.I.A. (an acronym for Shaman, Oracle, Priest-ess, Healer, Intuitive & Alchemist) on Goddess Mt Temple Sanctuary in Montague, MA. She is an Integrative Psychotherapist, Holistic Health Practitioner & Shamanic Healer. Tiana has specialized in Women’s Health Issues, Trauma healing,  sacred intimacy, communication and sex therapy for couples & individuals for over 30 years in a Gynecology practice in Longmeadow, MA.

Naomi Azriel Izen

Naomi is an event stylist, floral artist and curator of eclectic and sacred objects. As the owner and visionary of her own lifestyle design business, she is inspired by all things textural, wild patterns, heirloom flowers and creating spaces that allow for connection. She is known for her bohemian, sustainable and low-waste weddings that she designs. She also spends much of her time mentoring young adults to create the Jewish communities of their dreams through Moishe House. A graduate of Drexel University with a BS in Fashion Design and Merchandising, Naomi Azriel has worked for Interior and Lifestyle design magazines such as Lonny Magazine and Country Living Magazine, was the events editor for a global interior design publication, The Editor-at-Large.

Margie Malka Necha Klein Ronkin

Rabbi Margie serves as the Director of Clergy & Leadership Development at the Essex County Community Organization (an affiliate of the Massachusetts Community Action Network and Faith in Action), and as the Rabbi of Sha’arei Shalom in Ashland, MA. A graduate of Yale University and Hebrew College, Rabbi Margie is the creator of Moishe/Kavod House in Brookline, MA, a community of 600 Jews in their 20s and 30s dedicated to Tikkun Olam, the repair of the world. Rabbi Margie is a member of the Synagogue 3000 Emergent Communities Leadership Network, and was invited to the White House with other religious leaders to speak about her work. She is the co-editor of Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice (Jewish Lights), and her Jewish social justice efforts have been featured in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Newsweek, and CNN.