FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT: Debra Kolodny, Executive Director, ALEPH: Alliance for

Jewish Renewal

DATE: January 31, 2008

Phone: 301-565-0719

Email: DebraRuth@mac.com

Web site: www.aleph.org

Dear Editor:

Enclosed is the January 2008 ALEPH News Service. We hope you run one or more of the following articles and look forward to hearing from you if you do. This release contains:

1. Ruach HaAretz Registration Now Open!

2. ALEPH Rabbinic Student Appointed as Director of the American Jewish Society for Service

3. ALEPH HASHPA'AH Program In Great Demand

4. Jewish Renewal Rabbinic Pastors Association Forms

About ALEPH: ALEPH acts as the headquarters of the Jewish Renewal movement by organizing and nurturing communities, developing spiritual leadership, ordaining rabbis, cantors and rabbinic pastors, creating liturgical and scholarly resources, holding retreats and festivals and working for social and environmental justice.

ALEPH has attracted and energized thousands of seekers returning to Judaism and just as many who are deeply engaged but looking to elevate their current practice. ALEPH has 40 affiliated communities and its projects include two biennial gatherings: the Kallah and Ruach HaAretz. It also houses as the Sacred Foods Project, C-DEEP: The Center for Devotional, Energy, and Ecstatic Practice, the Rodef Shalom School for Peace, the Bet Midrash (producing siddurim, publications, videos and CDs from our founder Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and other Jewish Renewal teachers) and Kesher (supporting twenty and early thirty year old leaders). In addition to its projects, ALEPH also produces one-day Jewish Renewal festivals in communities around the US and Canada called Caravans. It is home to OHALAH: The Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal and a Rabbinic Studies Program, educating future rabbis, cantors and rabbinic pastors.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like additional information. ALEPH looks forward to working with you,

Debra Kolodny /s/

Executive Director

ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal

Ruach Ha'Aretz Registration Open for Summer of 2008

Ahavat Olam: The Presence of Love in Creation

June 30 - July 6 in Redmond, OR

Ruach Ha’Aretz will again host one of the premier retreats in Jewish Renewal, boasting some of the best teachers in the Jewish world, deep spiritual intimacy, inspired davenning and great food all in a beautiful natural setting. This year the retreat will be going upscale, at the luxurious full service Eagle Crest Resort, on 1700 acres in the high desert of Central Oregon, nestled among the Cascade Mountains.

As in the past Ruach boasts an incredibly joyful and creative program for children and opportunities for work-study service in the Mitzvah Core. Special additional programs this year include a pre-retreat for ALEPH Community leaders led by ALEPH’s Executive Director Debra Kolodny, private sessions with master Spiritual Director Rabbi Burt Jacobson (for an additional fee) and two advanced courses for which ALEPH Rabbinic Students can receive credit.

Be sure to reserve your spot at what promises to be another fabulous retreat with Rabbi Shefa Gold (The Path of Love); Rabbinic Pastor Shulamit Fagan (The Mitzvah of Bikur Cholim); Rabbi Daniel Siegel (Ahavah Rabbah: With a Great Love); Rabbi Hanna Tiferet Siegel (Now and Forever: Metta-tations on this World and the Next); Rabbi Leah Novick (Embracing the Tree of Life); Rabbi Diane Elliot (Rikud shel Ahavah/Love’s Dance); Ori Har & Oz DiGennaro (The Natural Jew); Rabbi Yitzhak Husbands-Hankin and Shonna Husbands-Hankin (Sacred Journeys: Inside and Out); Rabbi David Zaslow (Let your Love Flow: Prayer as Ahavat Olam); Devorah Gordon Zaslow (Storytelling-A Roadmap for the Soul); Rabbi Shaya Isenberg & Rev. Bahira Sugarman (Wisdom of the Heart: From Age-ing to Sage-ing, The ALEPH Sage-ing Mentorship Program Part 1); Hazzan Jack Kessler (With All Your Breath—With All You Have in You: Jewish Spiritual Song); Rabbi Marcia Prager (The Lord’s Prayer as a Jewish Prayer); Rabbi Wayne & Ellen Dosick (20 Minute Kabbalah); Rabbi Nadya & Rabbi Victor Gross (Longing and Loving-The Kabbalah of Relationship).

The brochure is available now at www.ruachhaaretz.com. For additional information contact: info@ruachhaaretz.com

ALEPH Rabbinic Student Appointed as Director of the American Jewish Society for Service

ALEPH Rabbinic Student Donna Chava Friedman was recently named one of two new Directors of AJSS this year. Donna Chava is currently an intern in Boulder, Colorado with Rabbis Victor & Nadya Gross. She returned to the United States from Jerusalem in June 2007 with her partner Nalini Indorf Kaplan.  Prior to living in Israel the couple lived in Brooklyn, where Donna was a successful entrepreneur for many years.

Donna Chava offers the following, “There are so many wonderful programs that Jewish teens can get involved with today.  At its core, AJSS is involved with promoting the Jewish Value of Tzedakah through physical acts of right balancing. The AJSS brings teens together from all parts of the USA. These teens contribute their time and labor to raise up – literally and figuratively – the standard of living in impoverished areas or areas that have been effected by natural disasters.  Additionally, these youngsters are involved with “hands-on” Tikkun Olam projects and as we well know, the value of first hand experience is most often the deepest type of learning available. It sticks.”

Donna Chava continues, “I feel privileged to have been chosen to help this valuable organization grow.  I look forward to the opportunity to introduce and/or expand concepts such as  Eco Kashrut to the underpinnings of the organization.“  
 
“Ms. Friedman brings an energy and commitment to AJSS that will help us to reach more teenagers and enable us to continue serving communities in need well into the future,” said Lawrence G. Green, Board Chair.
 
Since 1951, the American Jewish Society for Service has led 140 summer work programs throughout North America engaging teenagers in acts of tikkun olam.  We are accepting applications for student volunteers for our 57th summer in 2008. Applications and more information can be found at www.ajss.org <http://www.ajss.org/>  

 

ALEPH HASHPA'AH Program In Great Demand

Applications for the next cohort of Hashpa'ah, Jewish Spiritual Direction Training, have filled the roster just a couple of months after the application process began. The January 2009 class of ALEPH’s Hashpa’ah Program will be 50% ALEPH Rabbinic Students and 50% ordained clergy from the Jewish Renewal, Reconstructionist, Reform and Conservative Movements.

Future applicants will be placed on a waiting list for the training, as it is likely some spaces will open up. They will also be given priority in registering for the following cohort.

Hashpa’ah is the traditional term for the relationship with a spiritual director or mashpia who offers guidance and teaching on matters of Jewish faith and practice, and on a personal relationship with the Divine.

ALEPH’s program, open to clergy and student clergy offers a three-year concentration in Jewish Spiritual Counseling and Guidance. It is multi-disciplinary, integrating diverse spiritual guidance approaches and skills, while emphasizing the legacy of hashpa’ah that can be found in the literature and praxis of Hasidism and the Jewish mystical tradition. The curriculum integrates the sacred arts of spiritual and pastoral counseling; personal, intercessory and communal prayer and ritual; the art of the maggid (story teller); spiritual approaches to Torah and mitzvot; personal and communal ethical development/mussar; exposure to contemporary issues of bio-ethics, and other areas of learning.

Anyone may work with a Mashpia, and in the Jewish Renewal Movement Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi has suggested that that all clergy do so. For suggestions on finding a Renewal Mashpia, contact RebShohama@yahoo.com. For more information about the program visit www.aleph.org/hashpaah.htm

Jewish Renewal Rabbinic Pastors Association Forms

At the January Ohalah Conference in Boulder Colorado the Rabbinic Pastors Association was formed, with David Daniel Klipper as President, Ellen Weaver as Vice President, Simcha Raphael as Treasurer, and De Herman and Aggie Goldenhaus as Board members.

The group approved its new constitution, and is poised to serve as a professional organization for rabbinic pastors, assisting in their personal and professional development in cooperation with OHALAH: The Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal.  The RPA will focus on professional development, looking at ways for Rabbinic Pastors to integrate into the Jewish community with other Jewish clergy as it provides support and a caring community for its members.

The Rabbinic Pastor ordination is a uniquely Jewish Renewal phenomenon. It is a formal response to the needs of Jewish communities for gifted counselors and ritualists, and to the many extraordinary individuals who have a true calling to serve. ALEPH’s Rabbinic Pastor Program reaches out to those whose spiritual longings and gifts draw them to serve in fields that are often associated with rabbinic work. The program stresses rigorous mentorship with rabbinic supervision and a curriculum that includes sophisticated pastoral and liturgical skills. It emphasizes Jewish literacy as well as ongoing personal spiritual and emotional development.

To learn more about the program visit www.aleph.org/ rabbinic_pastor.htm. To learn more about the Rabbinic Pastor Association, contact David Daniel Klipper at daviddaniel@klipper.us.