Date & Time of Workshop: Tues. Jan. 10, 2023 5:15-6:30pm MT
Torah and Talmud describe moments of impending catastrophe – drought, famine, plague, war – in which our ancestors would call for community-wide fasting and prayer. To what end? What is the value of public spiritual practices and ritual theater in times of peril? Is there a role for communal symbolic acts and austerities in our time? We will look at texts from Talmud and Tanakh as well as examples from the Civil Rights Era, AIDS activism, and COVID times, and our own experience, to help us imagine new possibilities of public practice and protest.
Rabbi Irwin Keller has served Sonoma County’s Congregation Ner Shalom since 2008. He is a founder and faculty member of the Taproot Community, offering Jewish activists a path for deepening in Jewish practice (taprootcommunity.org). He is an LGBTQI rights activist, and authored Chicago’s gay rights law, in force since 1989. He was a founder and, for 21 years, a performer with the Kinsey Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet. He is ordained by the ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal, in the lineage of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. He blogs at irwinkeller.com.
Torah and Talmud describe moments of impending catastrophe – drought, famine, plague, war – in which our ancestors would call for community-wide fasting and prayer. To what end? What is the value of public spiritual practices and ritual theater in times of peril? Is there a role for communal symbolic acts and austerities in our time? We will look at texts from Talmud and Tanakh as well as examples from the Civil Rights Era, AIDS activism, and COVID times, and our own experience, to help us imagine new possibilities of public practice and protest.
Rabbi Irwin Keller has served Sonoma County’s Congregation Ner Shalom since 2008. He is a founder and faculty member of the Taproot Community, offering Jewish activists a path for deepening in Jewish practice (taprootcommunity.org). He is an LGBTQI rights activist, and authored Chicago’s gay rights law, in force since 1989. He was a founder and, for 21 years, a performer with the Kinsey Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet. He is ordained by the ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal, in the lineage of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. He blogs at irwinkeller.com.
