Hello everyone, Eliana Light here, and welcome to another episode of The Light Lab Podcast! In fact it is our 16th episode. Thank you so much for listening, for sharing. I hope that these conversations and these deep dives have influenced your T'fillah life, your prayer or liturgical life in a positive way. I hope that they can serve as inspiration for you. And I hope that you join us to continue the conversation. We're so excited for what's to come for our scrappy little show. And in particular, I'm very excited to share this week's interview with Rishe Groner. Now Rishe and I met when I was living in New York, and I feel so beyond grateful to have her as a friend and teacher. Rishe is a (spi)ritualist, I love how she says that, a writer, facilitator and educator, she is focused on bringing ecstatic embodied Jewish experiences to spiritual secrets that is right up my alley, and she talks more about that in the episode. She also talks about her upbringing. She was born to a Chabad Hasidic family in Melbourne, Australia. And now she's studying for rabbinic ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. She shares all about her tefillah journey, and also about the founding of the gene-sis.com, that's gene-sis.com, which is her home for embodied Jewish journey, classes and writing. Friends, Rishe is one of my absolute favorite writers, I suggest that you subscribe to her newsletter and follow her on socials. So that you can get more of this incredible, deep, deep Torah and deep, deep spirit that comes through in her writing that she shares through the generosity of her heart all the time. And she's also now working as the education director and rabbinic intern at the Beacon Hebrew Alliance in the Hudson Valley. We also talk about doing this kind of education work for kids, which you might know is a real passion of mine. And big news, she talks about her new podcast which has just come out. It's called Just Pray. And I highly, highly recommend also that you listen to it wherever you get your podcasts. She has, well, she'll talk about it later in the episode. I don't want to give it all away. But that is just to say that it was so life giving for me to have this conversation. And I'm so excited for you to hear it. Here's my interview with the beloved Rishe Groner.
Hi Rishe, it's so good to see you! Thank you so much for coming on the light lab podcast.
Thank you so much for having me, Eliana.
First of all, it's so good to look at your face. You know, we were talking before that, but it's just so good to look at your face. I consider you a prayerful person in a way that when I'm around you, even if it's just in conversation, I feel like there is prayer in the air. Now that I'm saying it out loud. You know, that's kind of nice. I, I was so excited to have this conversation, because I love to hear what you have to say and think about tefillah. And I know it's an open way to start. But you know, what's been on your mind and your heart these days around tefillah? And why is it something that you're passionate about?
Very big, open way to start. But my favorite things to talk about for sure. It's funny, because when you said that about like prayer around me, I sort of have this this tension I've been walking through almost all my life, which is you know, there's an expression that I've heard, to walk in prayer to like walk in your prayer, like you have your prayer of your life. And then you sort of like, follow that prayer. And you keep creating that prayer and you keep manifesting that prayer and you live your prayer. And that really is something that only sort of came to me more recently, like maybe in the last five, six years, that I was hearing that kind of expression. And I started to understand a bit more about how I've been thinking about prayer since I was younger. I think I've always experienced the tension between like formal prayer liturgical prayer, in some ways, I have like an obsession and an addiction to it. And in some ways, it's it's helped me really deeply where I've sometimes had to free myself from it. And I think the idea of walking in prayer, being in prayer, living, living a prayer as opposed -living on a prayer- and not a prayer, like being in that prayer zone where it's not always about opening a book and saying formal lines has been only now I look back, it's a journey that's been with me since I was very small, and now, particularly the last like a few months, it's been coming up very strongly for me. And I think that is attention that's like very prevalent in Jewish discussion of prayer like in the Talmud, the whole, you know tracte of Berachot, it's all about the rabbi's asking these questions of keva, and kavanah, which just has a nice ring to it. Keva of like, consistent, time bound, liturgical, whether it's about the words you say or about the time you do it, or the place you do it. It's more of like a structured process, you know, this tension that the rabbis present is your structured Keva part of prayer, and your kavannah, which literally you would translate as like intention. And I think, you know, I grew up was always like, a you praying with kavannah you like, do you understand the meaning of the words you connect it to the meaning, but it's more than that. It's like, do you have an emotional stake in this prayer? And sometimes it just rises up out of nowhere. You know, it's it's the begging and the pleading that just comes in the middle of the day, that sense of wonder and awe.
I want to go back to when you said that this journey of prayer, walking in prayer has been with you since you were little. Can you tell us a little bit about growing up? And what prayer meant to you and your family?
Yeah, oh my god. So I have the sweetest memories of being small. I grew up in a Chabad family, in Melbourne, Australia. And my parents were, you know, very devout, still are, thank G?d, G?d bless them, may they live and be well, very devout shlichim with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. And it was really, you know, the idea of, you know, of chinuch, of educating the children and like, modeling at home what you want and cultivating a deep passion was very important to them. So my earliest memories are like saying Shema, before I went into sleep, saying the whole Kriyat Shema and then afterwards saying the 12 pesukim, which is like this, this innovation that the Lubavitcher Rebbe ever had of like, picking these 12 verses from a variety of like, from the Torah, from, there might be a couple from the Talmud, there's definitely a few from Chasidic texts, and chanting that like as children before we went to sleep. Full disclosure, I still say it before it goes to sleep, along with a little Yiddish, good night, you know, may we be blessed kind of little snippet that my parents taught me, which I found out later, my grandmother learned from like her grandparents.
Oh, wow, could - I want to hear it? It's nighttime while we're recording this really, could you share it?
Ooh, it's a family secret.
Oh, then then you don't have to, it's okay.
I'll just do the beginning that a gute nachat... gezinter heit... like... it's funny, like my siblings, we each say differently because it's like your three year old memory. And Yiddish was my first language. So I actually understood it quite well. And we sort of go through like a bracha hatzlacha mein kepele, like a blessing on your head, then we would go and a mami and tati's kepele, and like we would go through like a list of everybody. I love it and I still love it. So I love saying Shema and I loved benching, birkat hamazon, you know, I think as a kid, I knew it off by heart when I was very young, like before I could read, definitely knew off by heart. And just different parts of, you know, the prayer service, I can't remember exactly what, my mom and my grandmother before her on my dad's side. So I've sort of come from a line of really amazing women who were very dedicated to the practice of morning blessings. So I have memories of being a child and hearing my Mom, do you know, baruch, da da da bein yom uvein layla, and then we'd be like, Amen. That like, please say amen to my brachas, is like, it's, it's not just for me to say those blessings, it's to have someone else they amen to them. And my grandmother, my father's mother, may she rest in peace, taught me so much about prayer. And part of it was that she was really into saying these blessings to the extent that like, in her later years, people would make sure to stop by her house in the morning so that she had someone to say amen to her blessings. And when she passed as a family we sort of all took on to get stronger in that practice. So I loved that, like as a kid, I was very connected to those things. And then of course, there was what I call prayer now is just any form of devotional singing. And I grew up in a house where we were singing niggunim, Hasidic melodies all the time. I think when I got older, and I, you know, now I'm an education director in a synagogue and I think a lot about how do we teach predicates. And so much of it is modeling. And it's not let's sit with the with the prayer book in front of us and learn I mean, when I started in, in in preschool and then in prep in Australia, I guess it's kindergarten here. We didn't get a Siddur for the first six months until you have a Siddur party, but you learn how to sing through you know, Modeh, Ani and Adon Olam, and by the time you get your Siddur you're not learning how to read you're learning how to follow along with songs you already know. And I loved it, I was very devoted to it very dedicated to it. I remember like in first grade, like, what kind of like co, like being one of the voices like leading the dominating class. And I have to say that like parallel to that is my experience as a child being very, I always say to people, I have a whole thing around like segregated prayer and being in the women's section, which maybe we'll get to, maybe we won't, that I was the only woman in the women's section since age three or four, because there was a minyan that was started across the street from us in someone's garage when I was very small. And I would go with my father every Friday night. And then that minyan moved into our backyard, and into our image into our playroom. And I was the only girl and then we went backyard. And there was a certain moment when I was like seven or eight, where I would go every Shabbos morning with my little sister holding my hand. It was only one street so I could cross it. And I would sit in this women's section, which was just a room, and listen and pay close attention to what was happening. And I sort of figured out how minyan, like public davening works just by listening. I couldn't see anything. No one was showing me what to do. And I was just obsessed. I was obsessed with that public prayer experience. And I remember like so clearly the day I figured out what Kedusha is. Like, Oh my God, you like put you go up and down your toes here. And you answer here. And because I was like watching someone, and then I was looking through, so I was really into that. And at the same time, I have to say that the that was something that was optional. So I was very excited about it. But things that were not optional, I was resentful around. So on weekdays that I wasn't in school, like on a Sunday, when I was told like when my mom would be like, we can't do anything until we've davenned, like get dressed and daven or my sister used to say to me, like, Did you daven today? Was, I hated it, it made me not want to do it. And I wish I could say that I've like worked past all of that now, but I think I still struggle with that. This like tension between having an obligation to pray and someone saying like, you need to sit down every day and go through all this liturgy making me say like, No, I don't want to. And then when I really want to, and when it's not happening around me saying, No, this container is something I need right now. And, you know, I went through that all through my child and teenagehood, I went through times where I would go to school and show up for davening, and look along the side of the page in English because I wanted to like know what I was saying. And that was like a really powerful period for me. And like some point in middle school, there was a time in high school towards the end where I would go into what was called like the mechina room for people who were new to Hebrew, and they would like daven a little slower, and I would like help lead. So I love those experiences. I was always like, I always have found it like six or seven shuls in my life. And then at the same time when I feel like I have to and someone's like, you know, now I'm in I'm in a community where they're like, We need you for a minyan. I'm like, I don't want to go!
(Laughs)
And I think that's that's what I mean by my tension with kevah kavanah. Where, there there was so many powerful women who modeled to me that prayer when prayer is not when communal prayer is not an expectation among orthodox women. And when and often not a possibility. You know, my mom didn't start going to shul until I was in my 20s because she always had babies at home. And I took the kids to shul and then now you know now she's really into it. She goes every week. She's a rebetzin. But I when I witnessed my mom, my grandmothers living in prayer. And that's what I mean by living in prayer. Where I often think about my two grandmothers, one is no longer in her body one G?d bless her may she be healthy and well and healed. And my grandmother here in New York is, I come into a house and she has a Siddur open on her table. But she doesn't actually use it. She like doesn't mean I think she might say Kriyat Shema out of it. But she I once asked her about it. I'm like, Bubbe do you daven? And she goes, I talked to G?d all day, from morning till night where we're just in one conversation. And my other grandmother, who may she rest in peace, she would pray three times a day full liturgy, that was kind of a family joke that you'd come to her house at midnight, and she'd be like, davennning ma'ariv and we call it tzibutscha kind of thing. And I and I don't think one model is better than the other. And I don't even think that they're in conflict with each other. But I have that tension sometimes of like, oh, I have to open up this book and mumble these words, I'd rather put on music and dance around my house or chop vegetables and like, do a meditation before I eat my food. Or I just talk to G?d all the time. I'm just in a constant conversation. And I don't know why I'm sharing this publicly but I had I've been talking about this with my spiritual director my mashpia, recently, but I said to her like I need to be more consistent with my prayer practice. Like I'm not doing something regularly. And she goes, Listen, I think you're talking to G?d a lot. Like you have G?d in your life. And you're in a constant conversation. And maybe we need to talk more about how would you talk to people. In isolation right now, and I sometimes struggle with that, like, I feel like, there's a certain feeling of satisfaction you get after you get through the liturgy every morning. And yet, I went through a period, I was working on Wall Street, and I would make it was really intense, like Wall Street, I feel like it's the center of idol worship in America in the world. And the energy was so strong, I would put, I made this playlist of like, old prayer songs, and I would listen to it the whole subway ride. And then I would walk down the street and feel like totally protected, like, ana b'koach, or whatever it was, would get me to the office. And then I prayed. Did I do the full liturgy? The full matbeah? Not necessarily. But was I in prayer? Absolutely.
This tension is so core, I think, to who we are as Jews. If we let it bother us, it's a good thing. I feel this in my life a lot. And I'm thinking about how you come from such a strong liturgical background. It sounds like growing up, you learned or were encouraged to learn or immersed your own self in, what do these prayers actually mean? What does the liturgy hold on me? What is it encouraging me to do in my life? And I'm wondering for you, what are the themes or ideas or energies, however you want to call it that the liturgy gives to you, even when you're not praying through the liturgy? Right, that it's just become a part of you.
So the first thing is such a beautiful question. The first thing that comes up is gratitude. I feel like I sort of live with tehilim, psalms, as a soundtrack to my life. Because this is where I'm saying like walking in prayer doesn't mean never uttering words of liturgy, it just means not like necessarily following the specific order of it. Siddur right means order. So I might, in the mornings, I have a practice where I take, I actually learned this from like, one of my teachers who's more in this sort of indigenous shamanic world, where she said, take your take a rattle, and every morning, sit down and and read using the rattle sing four songs. And very often those four songs, it just variants that Modeh Ani, maybe Elohai Neshama. Like, there's just so much me to say around that, that expression of gratitude and praise and Hallelu. And you know, I can, I can live in that for a long time. I grew up, I'll tell you the truth, the Hasidic space of prayer, and like, niggunim, can be very kvetchy, it can be very, like, G?d help us our hearts are broken! And it's an amazing thing. I think, I still feel sometimes that there's a certain way of singing niggunim that I was, like, blessed to learn where like, you can let it out surgically, deeply, in a way that when I hear people sing niggunim because it sounds pretty, and I'm like, there's more to it, you know, and it's one of the things I've been teaching in niggun workshops, which it's been a long time since I've done one. I think that the experience of like, using using a rattle and singing like upbeat morning songs, is a little bit where I've been able to learn from my teachers from other traditions around that. But tehilim is 100% an obsession of mine. I still, one of the things that I sort of grew up with was the idea of just taking out the book of tehilim and going through it and saying as much as you can. There are certain ways where it's like you say, a little part every day and then you finish it in a month or a week. Not so good at that. But I definitely will like on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur sit down and get through the whole thing. I'll definitely play music from Tehillim all day. And the same as Shir Hashirim, with Song of Songs. That's sort of one of my more recent adoptions in the last six or seven years, where I you know, every Friday night, I sing my way through it. I see my way through it all day. And I feel like, I feel like some of these, this sort of like, microcosms. Oh, I know what I call it! I have a whole thing that the liturgical words of tehilim specifically is a jungle gym, because it's like a framework. But you can go under it, and you can go over it, and you can go around it, and you can just dance next to it. So I can read a word of Tehillim and go super deep and start thinking about the meaning of it. And I've said it 1000 times, but suddenly, it has a whole new meaning. Or I can just recite it all and just that in itself is meditation and then itself, it's just empty my mind to get through a bunch of words. So think in that way, I sort of live alongside the liturgy where, when I see something that's awe inspiring, I'm gonna sing something from there because that's what I feel. Like when something amazing happens, I'm gonna say, hodu ladonai ki tov ki leolam chasdo. It's it's a language that is intrinsically interwoven into everything I do. And I'm very into blessings. So, you know, the blessings of food, the blessing after the bathroom? You know, I say that blessing I don't know how many times a day. And I just made a decision this weekend that one thing I've not been careful about that I'm resolving to be conscious of is the blessings after food.
Let's stick to this theme of blessings here. Because we are about to release an episode on baruch atah yud hey vav hey, particularly in the context of the Amidah. But I'm fascinated by this in general, how would you translate the blessing formula and to you, what does the blessing do? What is the function of a blessing? How does it manifest for you?
So I love the the translation of like, Baruch as breicha, as the pool, as like a way of sort of creating a channel creating a space or creating a vessel, a cli, for blessing, saying, like, I'm sitting here now, and I'm digging this well, I'm creating a catchment. And let the blessing rain down from here, this is the space and this is the place. So you know, all of these things are already blessed. I have a teacher often says, like, when you better sit and drink water, he's like, it's already blessed. You know, take it in, when you take it in, that's when you bless it. And I struggle with that, because, you know, I'm Jewish, we say blessings all the time. And I love saying blessings, I feel how, when you say a blessing, when you say like shehakol nihiye bidvaro, that everything is in existence through the word of the Divine, you're putting it back in existence by saying it. And I feel almost like it's a, it's an energetic impulse. It's a, it's like, it's like you're plugging in, you're connecting to a charger, you're saying, Okay, I'm here at the outlet, and I'm going to plug it in, and I'm going to switch it on, and I'm going to download that juice. And now that can go into the world. So if I'm blessing a fruit, that whole channel of blessing goes to all the fruit trees of the world, or if I'm blessing water taken in my body, that's going out to all the water in the world. And if I'm blessing in the, you know, in the Amidah, when there's 19 blessings, and its blessings for justice in the world, or for healing in the world, then you know, I'm sort of sending it out down that channel down that pathway. But it's a, it's a two way system. Of, you're bringing it in, you're bringing the I mean, there's like, you know, this is a Kabbalistic concept that's like, you know, this, the light that comes down, and that's the light that goes up. And you have the the light that you're sort of receiving and pulling in by saying that blessing by sort of empowering the divine shefa, to come into this universe and be present here. And then there's also your activation of that because you're a human, and you have hands and you have fate and you have a mouth. And, you know, the Divine doesn't have that. It's waiting for us to do that. By putting that into existence through we do. And I've definitely had moments of like, realization that the universe is in existence through our songs of praise and gratitude. That is how, you know, the birds sing with the angels every morning. And when we say our prayer and say our blessing and even when we just say like how you, thank G?d, I'm great, or whatever we do, we just we're constantly activating, activating, activating that energy in the universe.
I love that idea of divine activation. I'm, I'm feeling that really strongly right now. And you brought up you brought up some of your teachers, I'm wondering, who are some teachers and mentors, you know, not just from the Jewish world who have shaped your experience and understanding of prayer as it stands now?
I'm just coming from two years in Jerusalem, where I was praying every month or at, at some points during the pandemic, every other week with a community that I'm sure many of your listeners know about called Nava Tehila. The, what's called the sanctuary of, of praise. And Nava Tehila have really sort of you know, pioneered a unique form of musical circular chant-based Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat service. And I was really blessed to spend the last two years as part of their they're called the Levites, musically, the team. So you know, my teachers there were hugely fundamental in learning. There's a really fine line in prayer leadership between like, I just want to go deep and I want to have my ecstatic experience and I just want to pray my guts out and talk to G?d and dance. And I'm holding a space for people around me and I have to recognize and acknowledge with their energy is and you know, my teachers, Daphna Rosenberg and Rabbi Ruth Gan Kagan, G?d bless them very much, have been so instrumental and teaching me like, pay close attention to everything that's happening. Honor and respect the person leading because if you're supporting the leader, then you have a very important role and you can't just like go of on your own. You want to close your eyes and go deep into the prayer, but you have to keep your eyes open, to pay attention to the person leading, and to pay attention to the people around to connect with them. And you have to be able to hear the person next to you. So it's really, when you want to go very deep and sing your guts out, you actually need to be able to hear the person next to you on either side. So that's been a huge and you know, we had a period where Nava Tehila was running during the pandemic, we were doing it in backyards, with no one else except us, like we could only use, you could only have 10 people meeting, so it'd be us, and maybe, sometimes we could have two or three others. So it was really challenging, because normally you're feeding off the energy of everybody, and it was just us. So I learned a lot about really digging deep into resources there. And I have to say, one of my big so there's sort of a few areas where I've been very, very formative in taking my sort of use experience in praying in a you know, in a more formal Jewish Orthodox community and also general like singing and more Hasidic environment. You know, I went through years and years of not realizing that I was always going to music shows. And I would like, go to a show and just like go alone and you know, have a few drinks and listen and go really deep. And then you know, journal about my experience, I had no idea then these people were my shamans, and I was praying I was in a prayer. And you know, I don't share too much detail about this. But I've been on a path for quite a few years now of like indigenous shamanic prayer circles, sometimes involving plant medicines, sometimes just involving an intentional singing circle. This is a very strong, very strong in Israel right now. There's a lot of, it's called shira mekudeshet. It's, it's a group prayer. And you know, it's, it's, it's serious, there's a set up space, you know, it's in a circle, usually we create, like a central space, like an altar with some candles and sacred items. There'll be people leading the songs. And a lot of the songs are being sung from liturgy they'll be from some of them, like modern Hebrew, some of them are modern Hebrew translations of songs from Portuguese or Spanish or Sanskrit. Some of them are in Spanish or English. And that is a space of prayer. And I think going through this journey, for the last seven years, I've sort of met a lot of amazing medicine people, and people who have taught me from other other traditions about prayer. One of my teachers has a saying, which is actually going to be the title of my podcast. And he's on the first episode of the podcast, where he says, Just pray. You know, some people don't like to pray, I say, just pray. Some people say that I know how to pray, I say, just pray. I don't like to pray. And he has this whole monologue, which he really taught me that prayer isn't, I'm sitting down with my Siddur and I'm saying all these words. And prayer isn't, I'm drunk off the sound of my own voice, and I'm just having a great time singing and dancing. Prayer is like I'm sitting down, and I'm in this really deep space of creating a connection between myself and the Creator. And just making that space to happen. And I've had experiences where, you know, like, let's say, like, you're singing and you're in, you're in a group, and you're really thirsty, but you just can't stop what you're doing to go and get your thing. And you're like, Okay, I just gotta go pray through it, I just got to pray, I can't do anything else. And it's those moments when you fully surrender, and I'm like, There's nothing I could do now but pray. And this happens when I'm lying in bed at night, and I'm crying because I don't know where the rent is gonna come from, or, you know, I'm walking down the street in a new town, and I'm desperately sad and lonely, like, they're not always good moments. But these are the moments where I feel the dam break loose. And I'm like, This is what it is to just pray. You're like, G?d, help me, be there for me. And I have to say that, you know, I've learned through going out of the Jewish liturgical framework, how accessible that can be within the Jewish liturgical framework, if that makes sense. Another prayer modality that's very powerful, for me is dance. And I love leading dance prayer. And that was inspired by my journey with the 5rythms, which is a practice of, you know, you get into a room and there's someone playing music, and you have to just like, keep moving your body through all kinds of emotional release and different experience around letting your body show you. And the founder of 5rhythms who I never got to meet in her lifetime, but my name is Gabrielle Ross. She always says, you know, we move the body to still the mind. And I've had some of my biggest breakthrough prayer practices by just dancing by saying, like, I don't care that people are watching me, I don't care that something's going on. I've got to just like, let my body do the talking. And I think that, like I said before, you know, spirit doesn't have hands. A spirit doesn't have a mouth and we have to do that. And I think that all the time, like the shechina does not have a body and all she wants is to come out through a body. So when I dance, all I'm doing is like activating shechina and giving us space to be in the world.
I think Activating Shechina might need to be the name of this episode. That's what you're doing. That's what we're doing. It's so powerfu. Dance is definitely my preferred prayer mode as well. It is, it's being fully present, which is really hard to do. You mentioned your podcast. And I would love for you to share about what the project is and who you're talking to. Because as we have discussed, I think it really aligns with what we're doing here. So I think our listeners would love to learn about it.
Yes, this is a great way to keep me accountable to actually making sure it comes out some of these episodes have been sitting in the drawer for way too long. So you know, it was inspired by like I said, my teacher says, Just pray. That's sort of his catchphrase. And I've been thinking for a long time that it's really important to have exactly the kind of conversation you and I are having about how do you pray? How did you grow up praying? How do you see prayer now? And particularly, I think that that's an experience where we can learn from a variety of faith traditions, and a variety of practices. It's not just, I don't want to be limited to the Jewish liturgical experience, much as that's obviously, where my heart lies, and where my home is. And a lot of the people that I've begun speaking to are prayer leaders, and musicians, because I think that we haven't, and I mean, you're a musician. So I know that this is, you know, deeply aligned with the work that you do Eliana, in in that, when sometimes we think that we're singing, but we're actually praying. And sometimes we think that we're performing, but we're actually praying. And sometimes we're praying, but we forget and stop performing. That's a little slippery slope there. That has been the focus of deep work, for me and for communities that have been part of, and I think a lot about different musicians who are aware that their music is being utilized in prayer spaces, or that when they create a show or a concert or an experience, what they're actually doing is creating a prayer. So I'll be speaking to, you know, a few different people from a variety, a few different people, I have like a list of 200 people, we'll see who I get to, the people from a variety of like, tradition and paths. And some of whom are musicians, some of whom are faith leaders, some of whom are just people who've had certain experiences with prayer in their life, and hopefully, including some of their music. And I'm really looking forward to sort of seeing where the project takes me and how it evolves, as we go.
Now, our listeners might know you by your actual name, or they might also know you as the Genesis or through the Genesis, your project to bring embodied Judaism to us all. Is that kidding? Right? I'd love for you to share about the genesis of the Genesis and about all the amazing resources that you've put out.
Yeah, embodied ecstatic Judaism, I think is the latest tagline I settled on. The Genesis is literally like, it came to me while I was dancing. So you know, that's sort of, you know, you receive your downloads, because you're meditating, you're praying, I was dancing, and I left the dance floor to write it down on my phone, which kind of broke some rules there. And I really wanted to, I mean, I'm a writer, I've been writing all my life. So I really just wanted a sort of a space to put all my writing. And I really sort of hoped to make it a platform for other writers too, but I haven't gotten there yet. But what I really see it as is like, you know, a space for it to empower people on their journeys and support them in their own way. So, you know, it's not a physical space, there was a time that I was doing a lot of stuff in Brooklyn, doing a lot of different alternative prayers, experiences, and, you know, cacao ceremony for Tu B'Av, and Earth blessing for Tu B'Shvat, and embodied Shabbos, which was its own Friday night. And now I'm based up in Beacon, New York. So I've been doing some of that work are starting to do some of that work. But what happens online with the Genesis was really, it really sort of solidified during the pandemic, or the first week of the pandemic, when I realized that I had an email list of people who needed something. So I started writing a weekly email every week, where it's really sort of a spiritual, feminist take on the Parsha of the week, and whatever else is happening in the world. And hopefully, it's something that when people read it, I want them to I'm intending for them to sort of resonate with the experience, the collective experience that we're all going through internally, and to see how these ancient texts actually have something for us to see ourselves in that and carry it through. I have sections where I have poetry and translations of prayer. So that was one of the early iterations as I sort of was finding myself downloading these like, really powerful translations slash poetry of existing Hebrew prayer. And I'd love to build on that one day. And I also run a annual journey through Sefirat Haomer. And what's it's, I've been running it for, like seven years where I send out every every day an email, with a ritual, because again, I sort of realized that there's a lot of amazing sefirat haomer content out there, the sefirat haomer being the time period between pesach and shavuot, when there's 49 days of counting, and there's a whole, you know, there's the ancient agricultural significance of it. And then there's this journey of like, coming out of Egypt towards Mount Sinai, spiritual process of it. And then there's this Kabbalistic process of it. And I was writing these every, these like daily meditations with a concrete piece, because I sort of felt like, there's a lot of things I always want to take on in my life, like, I want to do yoga everyday for five minutes. And I want to dance every day for 20 minutes. And I want to sing four songs every morning, and I want to be kinder to strangers, and like, all these things you want to do, and like you can't do them all at once, you think you can, but you just can't. And they're kind of like life hacks, but their soul hacks, they sort of connect you to, you know, a greater sense of self of like your spiritual self. And I was sort of sending them out for years under the name soul hacks and only during the pandemic, I realized that the answer to most of what we need to be doing in our lives, is ritual. Because we put a lot on our heads, like I need to do all these things. And it's some, it's really hard to do that. I think during the pandemic, a lot of us learned, like, it's hard to brush your teeth every day. It's hard to get in the shower every day, it's hard to go outside every day. And those are the basic things that you need as a human. And when you make it ritual, when you create a meaningful, significant experience around it, where you're aligning yourself. And that's I think of prayer as alignment, I think of the blessing baruch atah as an alignment, it's sort of like you're setting yourself up and you're saying, Okay, now I'm doing this with intention. Now I'm doing this as a prayer. Now I'm doing this as a way of, like I'm eating because I want to nourish and love my body. I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning my home, because I'm tending my temple. You know, I'm doing I'm doing a little writing it says before I go to bed, because I want to clear my mind for the morning. And I've been doing a lot of research around ritual in general lately, and I think ritual and prayer very connected. So this spirit on our journey is really about everyday finding a new ritual, and then sort of at the end of the journey, being like, oh, yeah, these ones really stuck with me, I think I'll keep that going. Or this was nice. But you know, it's more of a special occasion thing.
That's so special. As someone who is continually recalibrating my daily rituals, I love the idea of bringing that blessing and alignment and intention, even when it's just cleaning he sink full of dishes, Elliana that is there that has been there for a long time. I actually want to kind of bring us back full circle to this contrast, that might not be a contrast to this binary that might not be a binary between keva fixed and kavanah intention. And I'm wondering how you have been exploring this with your students, because I also teach prayer to kids. And I'm always fascinated, and struggling with and exploring, how do we, how do we pass this on?
I wish I knew.
That's a great way for us to start. It's so hard.
It's so hard. And I think, one of the things you know, I'm new to I teach in a conservative synagogue, I'm the Education Director there and like, I get a lot of requests, like, not demands, but nice requests from parents and fellow clergy and team members around like, you know, how are we going to teach them prayer? And you know, what are they going to know? And, and I often hear about teaching Hebrew, like, people think that by coming to Hebrew school, once a week, they're going to come out speaking Hebrew, and I'm like, I went to a Jewish Day School for 18 years, and then lived in Israel for many years. And it still took me until I like sat down instead of watching Israeli TV, to be like really fluent in Hebrew. So same with prayer. I say, you know, the way that I learned prayer is because I was a weird kid who went to shul with my dad from age four or five, and went alone from age 7, 8, 9 and sat in the women's section alone and teach through the curtain and paid attention. And I think if I hadn't done that, I wouldn't be as fluent in prayer as I am today. And I think that anybody else you're the average kid that I grew up with, didn't start sitting down inside shul until they were like, you know, 12 13, 14 and even then they were like, coming to look at everyone's outfits or, you know, unless it was like the High Holidays, you know, then you sit next to a parent and you're like, show me what to do. And that's the norm. And there are more centralized prayers that people know because they learn how to say the blessings on the Torah for their. bat mitzvah. They learned how to say the blessings over food, because we say them together at Hebrew school. They're learning how to do I'm trying to get them to learn the after blessing, Birkat Mazon but I don't have any opportunities to do it, really. So it's one of my like, pet, desires to teach them. I really I do have a big strong belief in chant and music. And that's why I love what you do so much Eliana because you so gorgeously create those spaces for kids to sing along and learn. I think they like they know Kabbalat Shabbat, they don't know all of it, but they know a bunch of songs from Kabbalat Shabbat, and I think if anything, we could be probably pushing them even more like I think they're surprisingly, able to collect a lot, a lot of knowledge through song. And maybe I don't trust them enough that if I gave them the opportunity to sing the same songs every single week, they would know them. I'll give example like my my mentor, who I work with her over and Spodek here in Beacon, he does something I don't know, after I check with him, it's okay to share this. But he does something when he teaches called the Hebrew jumping monster. And he they're like, the kids are on the trampoline. And there's a whole thing where like, they jump and they like he says Hebrew words, and they sort of repeat the Hebrew words. And that becomes like the, the fuel for the monster to jump higher. I don't know exactly how it works. But the kids know blessings now. Like they come, I see them in other classes. And they like they can say the blessings on food. So I think it has to be experiential. And I think that this is a whole nother thing, but the whole the way that America, American Judaism, as I call it, the thing I pray about late at night is where we have a lot of work to do is remembering that Judaism needs to be in our homes as much as it's in the synagogues. And we can't rely on the synagogue to do it for us. And prayer needs to be in the home as much as it's in the synagogue. And now I'm going to tell you my soapbox my like important, one of my important philosophies in life. So I grew up in a world where based on like traditional halachic sources, women are not obligated to pray because it's a positive mitzvah dependent on time. Mitzvat aseh shehazman gramah. And that means that a woman who was expected to have other demands on her time, her children and her husband, or it's mentioned, the Talmud would alongside slaves, who also have other demands on their time, and not obligated in prayer because they have other obligations. And obviously, I grew up very frustrated in that. And I have a lot of, you know, triggers around someone coming around and be like, we need five more people for a minyan. And I'm like five more people or five more men? But I do think that, with that understanding, there was an entire parallel culture that is thousands of years old, that was occurring alongside the formal prayer, formal prayer, meaning, you know, prayer was a substitute for the temple sacrificial ritual life. So we had the a few of, you know, 1000 issues or a little more than that, where we were doing sacrificial ritual. And women would would not necessarily - they were involved in that a little bit like they would show up at the temple here and there, but not regularly. They were more likely doing at home rituals. And then the same thing with you know, once we got into the synagogue, instead of doing formal liturgical prayer, again, the women were not included in that the women were at home. And the women were praying. They were doing incantations and prayers at the child - during childbirth. They were singing songs with their children in the mornings, teaching them how to bless food and teaching them how to, you know, say Modeh, Ani, in the morning. The women were writing their own prayers, we have a tradition from the last 500 years, at least, of Yiddish prayers called tchinot from Ashkenazi Jewish women. There are other traditions in Ladino, from Jewish women in you know, the Spanish exile. And there's just so much that we don't know because it was passed down orally, it was embodied, so it was it was not a written tradition. And it was at home, it wasn't in the public space. And I think it actually goes all the way back to ancient Israel. I just did a bunch of research on this, to like worship of like a divine feminine figure. I think that the women had a whole practice in their home when they were grinding the wheat and when they were preparing the food and when they were tending each other in childbirth, and when they were laying out their dead and when they were singing songs, and weaving and spinning and all of these moments. When they were preparing for weddings, and teaching their daughters and washing the clothes, like there was so much going on, that was ritual, and that was prayer. And we just have none of it. And the only way we can access it, again, is by being in our bodies and doing embodied practice. Because, you know, there's something called mitochondrial DNA which like, is passed down, like through the mother line. And I believe that we can sort of activate that wisdom. It's more of a spiritual thing, but I sort of like to see it in a physical way, where we can activate it by doing that. And I think that's why I'm very into lighting Shabbat candles, you know, because it can transform the whole room. And when we sort of started putting our hopes into the synagogue, and we said, Okay, I didn't use you anything in my home, but let me go to the synagogue, and that will take care of my Jewish obligation. And when we started being inclusive of women in the traditionally masculine spaces, and we said, okay, women, you can be included now in a minyan and you can be included now, in traditional text learning. We forgot that the women were carrying a very long ancient tradition of at-home embodied ritual and spontaneous prayer and reciting Psalms, or talking to G?d in Yiddish. And we lost it and all I want is for it to come back.
Amen. Amen. You are part of that. You're a part of what is bringing it back, I think for so many of us, at least for me, and our time is coming to a close, sadly, but I'd love for you to leave us with a blessing. Could you leave us with a blessing?
L'sheim Yichud Kudsha Brich Hu U'shchintei. For the sake of the alignment and the unification of the Holy Blessed One, the Divine Presence, divine masculine and divine feminine. Of body and spirit, above and below, internal and external. Every polarity and every binary of consistency and spontaneity of kevah and kavanah. May we experience in alignment. May we experience unification. May we experience coming together. May we find the places within ourselves that is ecstatic, that is alive, that is juicy and joyful and yearning and craving to connect to the divine. May we find the tools and the practices and the ancient spiritual technology within our tradition activated from our ancestors, the gifts that they left behind for us. May they come to us and they we come meet them halfway. So we can be in full activation full Divine Alignment. They all our prayers be answered. May we hear our own prayers. May we hear the prayers of others. May we learn how to use our voices and our hands and our feet and our bodies and the instruments that we hold to be in full service to the Divine and to create just that little bit more light, that full divine activation at full shefa experience, of flow in the world. And may we see only healing and connection and unification and serious revelation of the Divine in this world. Yihiyu leratzon imrei fi vehegon libi lefanecha adonai tzuri vegoali. May my words be found favorable before You, my divine rock and redeemer, amen.
Amen. My breath is deepened, my soul is widened. I feel aligned I feel activated and I feel so so so deeply grateful that you were able to have this conversation share it out to the world thank you so so much for joining me this evening.
Thank you so much Eliana, what an honor, it is to sit with you and talk to you and and share these these ideas with so many beautiful people. And you know, may we all just learn how to pray. Thank you so much.
May we all just learn how to pray. And thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Christi Dodge of Allobi for editing this episode. Thank you Yaffa Englander for our incredible shownotes, please look at the show notes! They are so full of amazing richness. And she also does our social media - us on Instagram at the light dot lab be a part of conversation. Wishing you many blessings my friends. See you soon.
