What’s New at AriYael in 5785
Dear Friends,
As 2024 draws to its conclusion, the Jewish calendar year of 5785 has already begun. In this newsletter, we’ll catch you up on upcoming offerings to help you engage Jewishly with the joy and the grief inherent in life, and give you a peek inside the early days of Rabbi Dan’s retirement as a congregational rabbi (read to the end!).
See below for more on our upcoming events:
- Navigating Parent Loss During the Holidays: A Jewish Grief Workshop with Rabbi Dr. Greg Marcus
- Parent Loss Jewish Grief Group with Rabbi Dr. Greg Marcus
- The Shalom Death Café hosted by Zoë Goldblatt
- Rabbi Dan’s presentation “Building a Renewal Community in a Secular Jewish Landscape: A 30-Year Case Study” at the OHALAH Jewish Clergy Conference
- Sacred Intimacy Retreat for Couples with Rabbi Dan and Zoë
We wish to introduce Rabbi Dr. Greg Marcus, an independent Community Rabbi serving the San Francisco Bay area. Rabbi Greg creates safe spaces for learning, heart-work, prayer and ritual. Prior to his ordination in 2024, he had successful careers as a scientist, marketer in the genomics industry, writer, and life coach. He was also a stay-at-home dad for almost ten years. His mother, Elaine Marcus, died of COVID in 2020. You can learn more about him at RabbiGregMarcus.com.
Rabbi Greg will offer two important grief support programs this winter through AriYael. The first will be: “Navigating Parent Loss During the Holidays: A Jewish Grief Workshop.” Rabbi Greg writes, “The holidays can be a time of loneliness and grief, especially when we are mourning the death of a parent. And the current events can certainly magnify what we are going through.” Join Rabbi Greg, who is a trained grief counselor, for this special workshop to help you get through this challenging time. Rabbi Greg combines modern techniques for processing grief with timeless Jewish wisdom. Whether your parent died last month, last year, or ten years ago, this grief workshop will offer you insight and comfort. Cost is $18. Register Here.
The second offering is: “Parent Loss Jewish Grief Group.” Join Rabbi Greg for this highly interactive seven-session journey to help you deal with the loss of a parent, whether recent or not. One of the strengths of our Jewish tradition is the incredible toolbox of ancient and modern wisdom to help us process grief. Rabbi Greg will bring together both secular and spiritual wisdom to help you navigate your grief journey. This Parent Loss Jewish Grief group will help you:
- Put your experience into context as you learn about the grief process.
- Talk about your grief and your parent in a safe and compassionate environment.
- Engage with and honor your grief using Jewish tools and wisdom
- Build an ongoing relationship with your parent, even though they are gone.
- Explore which parts of your parent’s legacy you wish to Honor, and which parts you might be ready to let go of.
The seven-session group will follow a Jewish arc developed by the AriYael Jewish Healing Center that will include themes like Sharing Our Stories; Adjusting to being an Adult Orphan; Changing Family Constellations; Grieving as Healing, Tools on the Grieving Path; Jewish Grief Structures – Turning Memory into Blessing; Exploring the Stuck Places in Your Grief; Exploring growth and transformation in grief. Cost is $200. Register Here.
The Shalom Death Café is hosted each month on the third Wednesday of the month from 3:30-5pm Pacific Time on Zoom. All are welcome and there is no fee. Zoë Goldblatt is an End of Life Doula and spiritual care provider. She creates a safe space for people of all faiths and belief systems to come and share their thoughts, feelings and questions about any topic related to death and dying. On Zoom: Meeting ID: 823 1332 9709/Passcode: 075765
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82313329709?pwd=bHlpWG8zWHZlMGJ1K0t1VXM1S2FlUT09
We are very excited to offer our first Sacred Intimacy Couples Retreat at the end of January. This is a beta test of a new program we are developing. We will offer Jewish insights into the holiness of emotional and physical intimacy. In the Torah, the word for lovemaking is the Hebrew verb, la’da’at – “to know.” Our tradition offers practices that encourage us to know and be known with our partners. Keep an eye out for registration opportunities for more retreats of this nature in 2025!
We know that many of you on this mailing list are curious to know what Rabbi Dan did for the High Holidays in his first year of retirement. For Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Dan and Zoë were joined by Rabbi Dan’s siblings at Torah of Awakening in Berkeley led by Rabbi Brian Schachter-Brooks. On October 7th, the family attended a memorial vigil in Berkeley at Chochmat HaLev led by Tzvika Krieger and Lior Tsarfaty. For Yom Kippur, Rabbi Dan and Zoë, joined by Rabbi Dan’s brother David, attended services at Chochmat HaLev, also in Berkeley, led by Tzvika Krieger. Then, Rabbi Dan and Zoë gave two presentations at the Aravah Sukkot Festival in Mendocino County. One was titled, “L’Shem Yichud: Sacred Intimacy Workshop for Couples” and the other “Sulam Ya’akov (Jacob’s Ladder): Integrating Sacred Medicine into Jewish Spiritual Practice.” They went from Aravah to a Hoshana Raba Rain Dance ceremony in Sonoma County. This event was organized by members of the Wilderness Torah community (Rabbi Dan is on the Wilderness Torah Board of Directors). Because Northern California and Israel share similar climate and weather patterns, we learned that there are overlapping similarities in the ways in which the indigenous peoples of those lands pray for rain to return to the land.
May the rains come at the right time and in the right amount. May they fall like purifying tears. May the cool down the fires and the heated political climate. Ameyn.
