Approaching Judaism

When I was 12 years old, I told my Rabbi I didn’t believe in God.

Thus began my Jewish journey.

As a teenager I was strong-headed and always sought new ways to challenge myself. ‘So,’ I pondered, ‘what if I move to Israel, pretend the Bible was written by God (a premise, remember, I didn’t really believe in) and see what happens?’ So, at 17 I applied to NFTY EIE (now called Heller High), the high school semester in Israel program, and soon was on my way. The next 6 months changed my life forever.

I returned home feeling deeply spiritual and deeply aware that something about the Judaism that had been served to me growing up had failed to elicit this same feeling. Why the dichotomy? I spent the next ten years trying to answer that question.

In my mid-twenties, I became a Moishe House resident in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and began experimenting with producing Jewish events for the first time. My home became a center for experimentation. I’ve hosted hundreds of Jews arts programs, Shabbat dinners, and queer investigations of Jewish texts right in my own living room.

In 2019, two important things would shift my spiritual journey. The first is that I discovered ecstatic dance, a spiritual community for moving, shaking, and dancing as a means of processing what is alive in our bodies. On rare occasions, this also allows for a spiritual connection that is hard to access in our regular day to day lives.

The second thing was receiving a Jewish artist fellowship with BASE Brooklyn. Over the course of the year, I developed a solo theater piece exploring my Jewish identity. This process of reexamining my Jewish life prompted a new found clarity. I wanted to focus my life on Judaism and the spiritual "wrestling with God" at its center.

In the pursuit of building a Jewish community centered around embodiment practices, I made the decision to leave New York and study Rabbinics at Hebrew College in Boston. While there, I hosted my first Jewish ecstatic dance and have continued to grow the community ever since.

In recent years, I have collaborated with organizations including Romemu, Lab/Shul, Moishe House, Or HaLev, Congregation Beth Elohim, Temple of the Stranger, and Ruach.