Rabbi Léah Novick, an elder of the Jewish Renewal movement, shares practices of connecting with ancestors of inspiration, and her work to keep alive the teachings of 19 century Italian poet Rachel Luzzatto Morpurgo, 12th century tsadeket Dulcie of Worms, Maccabean Queen Shlom Tzion and 16th century Kurdish Rabbah Asenath Barazani. Reb Léah speaks of her journeys with these women, of reclaiming relationship with Shekhinah and reflects on ways her earlier decades of activism inform her journey...

Deatra Cohen & Adam Siegel, authors of the acclaimed book Ashkenazi Herbalism, bring us on a journey into Eastern European plant remedies and the world of traditional Ashkenazi Jewish healers. They offer wisdom on building relationships with ancestral plants, and share candidly about the gifts and challenges of their journey into rediscovering the herbal medicines of their people.

Mazal Masoud Etedgi, founder of B’samim Apothecary, shares Moroccan Jewish plant magic and sacred prayersong, and speaks into the challenges of longing and belonging in diaspora. Mazal offers insight into ancestral healing at the intersections of creativity, chronic illness and trans and non-binary identity.

Galeet Dardashti takes us on a journey into Persian Jewish Prayer, shares exquisite compositions, and speaks intimately on weaving her voice with the voices of her ancestors, across place and time.

Qes Efraim Lawi shares Beta Israel / Ethiopian Jewish traditions, offers prayersongs in his ancestral language of Ge’ez, and speaks about being the first spiritual leader of Beta Israel / Ethiopian Jewish community born in diaspora.

Taya Mâ Shere welcomes us into season 2, reflecting on ways ancestors shape our identity, offering insight into the complexities of longing and belonging and foreshadowing the Jewish Ancestral Healing season to come. 

Tune in to episode 20 of the Jewish Ancestral Healing podcast as Taya Mâ is in conversation with Daniyel Berchenko. Daniyel shares of his pilgrimages to ancestral homelands in Eastern Europe, invites us into the portal that can open when visiting the place of one’s people, and speaks to gathering genealogical research as a pathway for revealing connection.

Tune in to episode 19 of the Jewish Ancestral Healing podcast as Taya Mâ is in conversation with Arthur Waskow. Arthur tells intimate stories of his ancestors as the inspiration for his lifelong justice work,  shares powerful racial, social and environmental justice movement history as it intersects with his own deepening on a Jewish spiritual path, and invites us to find God everywhere and in everything.

Rabbi Jill Hammer shares the brilliance of ancestral wisdom in the earliest Jewish mystical text, the Sefer Yetzirah, speaks to the magic of midrash, creatively telling the stories of ancient ancestors, and invites us into the power of ancestral dreaming.

Tune in to episode 17 of the Jewish Ancestral Healing podcast as Taya Mâ is in conversation with Matta Ghaly. Matta shares their journey of multireligious identity, speaks to Karaite Jewish traditions, sings Jewish prayer in the maqam of the heart and brings blessings of connection with queer ancestors.

Simcha Raphael shares how he first came to understand the existence of life beyond death, and takes us on a dynamic journey through Jewish views of the afterlife, and offers wisdom on how to show up well for those who are dying.

Rachel Leah (Reya) Bello shares with us Yemenite Jewish traditions, stories of her midwife great-grandmother and how the support of her ancestors guides her in her personal journey as a healer.

Rami Avraham Efal brings us to bear witness in Auschwitz-Birkenau, unpacking the radical act of showing up to honor the unthinkable, and inviting us to find healing and transformation in ceremonial silence.

Keshira haLev Fife invites us to embody resilience, shares her experience priestessing in the wake of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, and speaks to intersections of her Ashkenazi and Filipinx ancestral identities and legacies.

Lynn Gottlieb speaks to her journey as one of the first women rabbis, tells stories of the ancient ones and the power of naming, and asks us to dream into restorative justice.

Annie Kohen invites us into feldmestn, the Eastern European Jewish women's tradition of cemetery-measuring, as an embodied practice of honoring our beloved dead.

Tune in to episode 5 of the Jewish Ancestral Healing podcast as Taya Mâ is in conversation with Shoshana Akua Brown. Shoshana shares about weaving mixed ancestral spirituality, altars as a portal for connection, justice work as ancestral tending, and our existence as an expression of ancestors’ deepest dreams.

Hadar Cohen weaves Mizrahi magic and activism through the lens of sacred arts, Jewish mysticism, and her ever-evolving relationship with longing and belonging, in relationship with exile and her ancestral homeland of Jerusalem. 

Noam Lerman reclaims the power and practice of tkhines ~ spontaneous Yiddish prayers ~ sharing ways tkhines have been kept alive in their family and have been a home for women and gender-marginalized Ashkenazi Jews, as well as ways we can engage this practice of prayer from the heart today.