Meet our 2025 Key Presenters
Keynote Speaker: Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie
Social activist and storyteller, writer and community leader, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie (he/him) is the Co-Founding Spiritual Leader of the Lab/Shul community in NYC and the creator of the ritual theater company Storahtelling, Inc.
Israeli-born, he’s been living in New York since 1998. He received his rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 2016, the 39th generation of rabbis in his family — the first one to be openly queer. Rabbi Amichai is the star of Sabbath Queen, Sandi DuBowski’s award-winning documentary film, 21 years in the making, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2024. Watch there trailer here.
Rabbi Amichai serves on the Executive Board of Rabbis for Human Rights, is a co-founding member of the Jewish Emergent Network, a founding faculty member of the Reboot Network, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Sulha Peace Project for Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers, the Leadership Council of the New York Jewish Agenda, the Advisory Council for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and as an advisor to Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance.
He’s been named “an iconoclastic mystic” by Time Out New York, “a calm voice for peace’ by NPR, a “rock star” by the New York Times, a “Judaic Pied Piper” by the Denver Westword, a “maverick spiritual leader” by The Times of Israel and “one of the most interesting thinkers in the Jewish world” by the Jewish Week. In 2017 he was named one of America’s Top 50 rabbis by The Forward.
In June 2017 Rabbi Amichai published The JOY Proposal with a radical response to the reality of Intermarriage and taking on a personal position on this issue, including his resignation from the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement. In 2022 Rabbi Amichai began publishing Below the Bible Belt a daily digital project extended over 42 months, critically queering and re-reading all 929 chapters of the Hebrew Bible. Amichai is Abba to Alice, Ezra and Cai-Hallel.
Social activist and storyteller, writer and community leader, Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie (he/him) is the Co-Founding Spiritual Leader of the Lab/Shul community in NYC and the creator of the ritual theater company Storahtelling, Inc.
Israeli-born, he’s been living in New York since 1998. He received his rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 2016, the 39th generation of rabbis in his family — the first one to be openly queer. Rabbi Amichai is the star of Sabbath Queen, Sandi DuBowski’s award-winning documentary film, 21 years in the making, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2024. Watch there trailer here.
Rabbi Amichai serves on the Executive Board of Rabbis for Human Rights, is a co-founding member of the Jewish Emergent Network, a founding faculty member of the Reboot Network, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Sulha Peace Project for Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers, the Leadership Council of the New York Jewish Agenda, the Advisory Council for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and as an advisor to Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance.
He’s been named “an iconoclastic mystic” by Time Out New York, “a calm voice for peace’ by NPR, a “rock star” by the New York Times, a “Judaic Pied Piper” by the Denver Westword, a “maverick spiritual leader” by The Times of Israel and “one of the most interesting thinkers in the Jewish world” by the Jewish Week. In 2017 he was named one of America’s Top 50 rabbis by The Forward.
In June 2017 Rabbi Amichai published The JOY Proposal with a radical response to the reality of Intermarriage and taking on a personal position on this issue, including his resignation from the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement. In 2022 Rabbi Amichai began publishing Below the Bible Belt a daily digital project extended over 42 months, critically queering and re-reading all 929 chapters of the Hebrew Bible. Amichai is Abba to Alice, Ezra and Cai-Hallel.
Musician-in-Residence: Shira Kline
Shira Kline (she/her) is a spiritual leader, ritual and performance artist, recognized as a revolutionary educator and named one of the new re-engineers of Jewish life today. Co-founder of Storahtelling and Lab/Shul, she serves as Spiritual Leader weaving liturgy, text, story and song. Known in the sanctuary as a spiritual adventurist and on the kiddie rock stage as ShirLaLa, Shira practices in the field of sacred play.
You may have met her along the way over the past 20 or so years in a school, a studio, the sanctuary, on the streets, on the stage. Some fun highlights along the way have been 80 episodes of Shabbat ShaMorning (featured on NPR!), hosting a queer Jewish podcast, leading Shabbat on the Burning Man playa, recording four award-winning albums (featured on Netflix!), presenting new spiritual theory at international conferences, creating educational resource center Blog Sameach, and touring the world from New York City to New Zealand with the queer glam kiddie rock band, ShirLaLa, passing on Jewish ancestral wisdom to the next generation.
Shira is a frequent guest faculty of numerous international leadership conferences including Hava NaShira, SLBC, PJ Library, HUC-JIR Seminary and Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music. Shira is a member of the Mitsui Collective Kollel, building resilient community through embodied Jewish practice and somatic antiracism. Expansive and imaginative, Shira is here to nourish and ignite expression of the spirit. At home in Brooklyn, unceded Lenape lands, she lives to cook, dance, and play with her beloved and their daughter.
Shira has been called the “Pied Piper of the next green generation” by LA Parent Magazine for, “Earth Worm Disco” found at www.RockinOutGreen.com. She celebrates eco-music for all the little rock ‘n rollers out there who love to sing and dance and who love our planet too! A Parent’s Choice award winner, Earth Worm Disco nourishes the brain, body and heart with original and imaginative music, stories and games that connect children to environmentalism.
“In envisioning my work in the future, I invite you to walk in the garden. Here, just as on the third day of creation Genesis, when the land starts to sprout, every growing plant contains its own seed so that it can germinate. Seeds born this way bloom and grow with sovereignty to tell their own story. I hope to empower students of all ages to interpret the many paths of Jewish practice in as many languages as it takes for authentic translation and transmission. In this way, Judaism will continue to thrive just as it does in this garden of wonder and wisdom, cycles of renewal and regrowth, and seeded by the magical Life Source from which it derives.”
Shira Kline (she/her) is a spiritual leader, ritual and performance artist, recognized as a revolutionary educator and named one of the new re-engineers of Jewish life today. Co-founder of Storahtelling and Lab/Shul, she serves as Spiritual Leader weaving liturgy, text, story and song. Known in the sanctuary as a spiritual adventurist and on the kiddie rock stage as ShirLaLa, Shira practices in the field of sacred play.
You may have met her along the way over the past 20 or so years in a school, a studio, the sanctuary, on the streets, on the stage. Some fun highlights along the way have been 80 episodes of Shabbat ShaMorning (featured on NPR!), hosting a queer Jewish podcast, leading Shabbat on the Burning Man playa, recording four award-winning albums (featured on Netflix!), presenting new spiritual theory at international conferences, creating educational resource center Blog Sameach, and touring the world from New York City to New Zealand with the queer glam kiddie rock band, ShirLaLa, passing on Jewish ancestral wisdom to the next generation.
Shira is a frequent guest faculty of numerous international leadership conferences including Hava NaShira, SLBC, PJ Library, HUC-JIR Seminary and Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music. Shira is a member of the Mitsui Collective Kollel, building resilient community through embodied Jewish practice and somatic antiracism. Expansive and imaginative, Shira is here to nourish and ignite expression of the spirit. At home in Brooklyn, unceded Lenape lands, she lives to cook, dance, and play with her beloved and their daughter.
Shira has been called the “Pied Piper of the next green generation” by LA Parent Magazine for, “Earth Worm Disco” found at www.RockinOutGreen.com. She celebrates eco-music for all the little rock ‘n rollers out there who love to sing and dance and who love our planet too! A Parent’s Choice award winner, Earth Worm Disco nourishes the brain, body and heart with original and imaginative music, stories and games that connect children to environmentalism.
“In envisioning my work in the future, I invite you to walk in the garden. Here, just as on the third day of creation Genesis, when the land starts to sprout, every growing plant contains its own seed so that it can germinate. Seeds born this way bloom and grow with sovereignty to tell their own story. I hope to empower students of all ages to interpret the many paths of Jewish practice in as many languages as it takes for authentic translation and transmission. In this way, Judaism will continue to thrive just as it does in this garden of wonder and wisdom, cycles of renewal and regrowth, and seeded by the magical Life Source from which it derives.”
