Date & Time of Workshop: Monday Jan. 9th, 2023 10:00am-12pm (mountain)
In its laws and narratives, the Torah offers a threefold concept of space: sacred shrine (mishkan), ordinary space, and wilderness (midbar). The Torah also offers two existential states: tumah, associated with death, sexuality, fertility and childbirth, and taharah, a state of being able to enter the sanctuary and engage with priestly ritual. Tumah is associated with wilderness, while taharah is associated with the shrine. Rituals for transitioning from wilderness to ordinary space, and from ordinary space to shrine space, are similar, and in some cases, double offerings are made to shrine space and to wilderness space at the same time. Revelation happens in both places.
How does the Torah understand the relationship between wilderness and tumah, often translated “impurity”? Could we call tumah, and the wilderness, a wild kind of holiness, distinct from shrine space? What would it mean to reclaim the wildness of untamed nature, birth and death as a sacred space? In this workshop, we’ll study rituals around moving between wilderness, ordinary space, and the sanctuary, and consider how these rituals might teach us about the unique holiness of wilderness, both out in the world and inside ourselves.
Rabbi Jill Hammer PhD, author, scholar, ritualist, poet, dreamworker, mystic, and midrashist, is the Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion (www.ajrsem.org), a pluralistic seminary based in Yonkers, NY, and co-founder of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute (www.kohenet.org), a spiritual leadership training program and community centering embodied, earth-based feminist Jewish leadership. She is the author of Undertorah: An Earth-Based Kabbalah of Dreaming, Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah, The Hebrew Priestess: Ancient and New Visions of Jewish Women’s Spiritual Leadership (with Taya Shere), The Omer Calendar of Biblical Women, The Jewish Book of Days: A Companion for All Seasons, Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women, and The Book of Earth and Other Mysteries.
Rabbi Hammer is also the author of articles published in journals such as Religion and Literature, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Studies, The Journal of Applied Social Psychology, and The Journal of Lesbian Studies, and anthologies including Best Jewish Writing 2002 and the Encyclopedia of Women and World Religions, newspapers, magazines such as Lilith Magazine, websites such as feminismandreligion.com, and beyond. She is the translator of The Romemu Siddur and of Siddur haKohanot: A Hebrew Priestess Prayerbook. She has written a children’s book, The Garden of Time.
In its laws and narratives, the Torah offers a threefold concept of space: sacred shrine (mishkan), ordinary space, and wilderness (midbar). The Torah also offers two existential states: tumah, associated with death, sexuality, fertility and childbirth, and taharah, a state of being able to enter the sanctuary and engage with priestly ritual. Tumah is associated with wilderness, while taharah is associated with the shrine. Rituals for transitioning from wilderness to ordinary space, and from ordinary space to shrine space, are similar, and in some cases, double offerings are made to shrine space and to wilderness space at the same time. Revelation happens in both places.
How does the Torah understand the relationship between wilderness and tumah, often translated “impurity”? Could we call tumah, and the wilderness, a wild kind of holiness, distinct from shrine space? What would it mean to reclaim the wildness of untamed nature, birth and death as a sacred space? In this workshop, we’ll study rituals around moving between wilderness, ordinary space, and the sanctuary, and consider how these rituals might teach us about the unique holiness of wilderness, both out in the world and inside ourselves.
Rabbi Jill Hammer PhD, author, scholar, ritualist, poet, dreamworker, mystic, and midrashist, is the Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion (www.ajrsem.org), a pluralistic seminary based in Yonkers, NY, and co-founder of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute (www.kohenet.org), a spiritual leadership training program and community centering embodied, earth-based feminist Jewish leadership. She is the author of Undertorah: An Earth-Based Kabbalah of Dreaming, Return to the Place: The Magic, Meditation, and Mystery of Sefer Yetzirah, The Hebrew Priestess: Ancient and New Visions of Jewish Women’s Spiritual Leadership (with Taya Shere), The Omer Calendar of Biblical Women, The Jewish Book of Days: A Companion for All Seasons, Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women, and The Book of Earth and Other Mysteries.
Rabbi Hammer is also the author of articles published in journals such as Religion and Literature, Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Studies, The Journal of Applied Social Psychology, and The Journal of Lesbian Studies, and anthologies including Best Jewish Writing 2002 and the Encyclopedia of Women and World Religions, newspapers, magazines such as Lilith Magazine, websites such as feminismandreligion.com, and beyond. She is the translator of The Romemu Siddur and of Siddur haKohanot: A Hebrew Priestess Prayerbook. She has written a children’s book, The Garden of Time.
