Our 5781/5782 Cohort
Ariel Aaronson-Eves (Dover, NH) was raised among Jewish, Christian, and Unitarian Universalist traditions and is currently finishing her preparations to become a Unitarian Universalist minister and exploring what agricultural chaplaincy might look like. Informed by their years as a farmer, Ariel's most abiding commitment is to land and to healing the relationship between people and the land.
Emma [Em/Ever] Berkey (Nashville, TN) is a community organizer, musician and community herbalist living in Nashville, TN on Shawnee and East Cherokee land. They are a founding organizer of the emerging collective known as Nashville Jews for Justice, and are also a founding member of local herbal mutual aid collective called Nashville Herbal Community Care. They are very much interested in integrating spiritually nourishing and healing practices within these organizing communities working toward collective liberation.
Melissa Nussbaum Freeman (Milton, MA/Tepoztlan, Mexico) is a Queer Jewish woman of mixed-ethnicities; born and raised in NYC, Melissa spent most of her adult life in a small mountain town in Central Mexico where she practiced healing arts, studied theatre, and raised her son. It is still home. Melissa is an artist/activist. Her main medium of expression is all aspects of theatre and these days mostly with her company, Red Sage Stories: Playback Theatre & Art for Social Change. She uses the lens of Art, Culture & Ritual to organize in solidarity with Palestine liberation, abolition everywhere, and supporting the JVP Havurah Network at Jewish Voice for Peace.
Julia Metzger-Traber (Purcellville, VA) is an elicitive racial justice facilitator and trainer, social change strategist, somatic practitioner, performance artist, and mother of a glorious and opinionated 3-year-old. Rooted firmly in her Eastern European Jewish lineage, and raised with the German language and culture of her immigrant, Catholic father, she has always been devoted to healing intergenerational trauma and getting to the roots of racialized conflict.With her whole body-mind, heart, and imagination, she supports communities, organizations and individuals to speak truths, address racialized harms, uproot colonialism and white supremacy from their lives, vision change and move toward embodying those visions. Julia is co-creating a healing-centered, multi-racial community and a land commons at Potomac Vegetable Farms, in Hillsboro, Virginia.
Acadia Roher (Little Rock, AR) is a public historian and community organizer tying together movement history, political action, genealogy, spirituality, and geography.
Noah Schuettge (Brooklyn, NY) is an organizer, facilitator, uncle, and little brother living in Brooklyn, NY, spending his covid days in paid work as an organizer with the ACLU of NY and in his volunteer work leading direct action trainings for his Jewish community with IfNotNow and Never Again Action (as well as leveling up his home bartending skills.) He formerly worked in youth organizing spaces in New England and is passionate about following the leadership of young people and rooting out adultism in movement spaces. He loves to read, cook, dance and reach for connection anywhere he can find it these days - in the streets or over zoom. Current TV he is watching: Top Chef and Younger.
Kendra Watkins (Detroit, MI) is a Black/Queer/Trans Jew and Midwestern Southerner. They recently returned to Michigan after spending some time in North Carolina, and currently live and work in Detroit, originally known as Waawiiyaatanong. Kendra works as a facilitator of racial justice education & ritual with Detroit Jews for Justice, in addition to organizing with JVP. They have a deep love for building queer, anti-racist Jewish community, learning liberatory Torah, and exchanging potluck recipes.
Serena Adlerstein (Albuquerque, NM) grew up in Maine, has lived in several other places, and plans to stay put in Albuquerque, NM for a while. She currently supports Jews and allies commit to the fight for Immigrant Justice with Never Again Action, and worked full time as a volunteer organizer with Movimiento Cosecha prior. She spends most of her time thinking about social movements and power, but more importantly, she misses dancing in crowded places, meeting strangers in kitchens at house parties, and is grateful she still gets to take long walks listening to podcasts about music and/or well-curated playlists.
Alison/Ali Cohen (Washington, D.C/NYC) loves any and all opportunities to integrate community-building, contemplative practice, social justice, and joy. She just moved home to DC after years away in Boston, NYC and Ghana. During COVID, she’s spending way too many hours a day on Zoom coaching public high school principals and teachers, co-facilitating a White Awake antiracist learning space for school coaches, and teaching trauma-informed mindfulness practice to human beings from many walks of life. Pre-COVID, she also facilitated CopWatch trainings with NYC’s Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and is figuring out next steps re: organizing work in DC. Off Zoom, Alison refuels in the woods, on the (meditation) cushion and the dance floor, and through Jewish prayer/ritual/chanting practices. Fun fact: Alison spent a month in silence in 2018.
Cara Gold (Toronto, ON) is a Jewish community builder, organization nerd, community organizer and dreamer of rad futures working at the Miles Nadal JCC in Toronto. Her work centres building community for Jews on the margins including LGBTQ+, under 40, Jewish&, and downtown Jewish organizations. In her downtime, she serves on many Jewish boards, including Hashomer Hatzair Canada, Heart to Heart, and NIFCan Next Gen. She continues to build rad Jewish community in grassroots spaces locally.
Shula Pesach (Sebastopol, CA) is a community astrologer, trans* theologian, and somatic coach devoted to cultivating flourishing queer and decolonial futures. Shula lives as a white settler on Southern Pomo Land, and traces their ancestry from diasporic Ashkenazi Jewish peoples immigrating from Romania and Belarus. Shula tends to lineages of the gender-blessed, Mercurial, and riparian. They are neurodivergent, a survivor, chronically ill, and transgender, with citizenship and education privilege from a working class background. They are a co-visionary of the Queer Ecologies Constellation, a multi-regional network and seasonal cohort of LGBTQ2SIA+ and QTBIPOC farmers, artists, and organizers gathering in study of queer-centered ecology and land-based practices. They serve as a mentor and rite of passage guide for non-binary youth with Stepping Stones Project and Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education. Shula is a member of the inaugural F.I.R.E ( Foundations in Resilience Education ) Fellowship. Shula is an apprentice of bird-language, the tarot, and challah baking.
Madison Slobin (Vancouver, BC) is currently situated on unceded Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh territories (Vancouver, BC), where she also grew up. Madison is a 27 year old Queer Jewess, who is passionate about expanding Jewish spaces and practices to centre those who have been on the margins, in order to cultivate a Jewish culture rooted in justice. Madison has co-founded YVR Yenta (a modern matchmaking collective), Shiva Delivers (Jews in Solidarity with Black Grief) and Hamakom (a ‘Beit Midrash/House of Learning’ that coordinates Jewish ritual and educational gatherings). Madison loves drinking seltzer and taking film photographs of all her friends.
Raisa Tolchinsky (Charlottesville, VA & Chicago, IL) is a Jewish American poet, teacher, boxer, & amateur herbalist. Currently, Raisa is a candidate for an M.F.A in poetry at the University of Virginia, where she is working on a manuscript of poetry about women fighters and Jewish identity. She believes that the body is a deep source of wisdom.
Hannah Yerington (Bowling Green, OH & Vancouver, BC) is a community educator, director of the Bolinas Poetry Camp For Girls, and a poetry MFA candidate at Bowling Green State. She is a published poet and a friend of all flowers.
Zacha Belok (New York) is a mover/dancer, art for healing, healing for loving, chef for cheffing, sun for churning the flames of my soul, can't stop moving, a network of earthworms, undulating skin in engaged prayer. Let's play together.
Leo Farbman (Seattle, WA) is a white, Ashkenazi Jew living in Seattle by way of New York. He lives with Cerebral Palsy and considers himself disabled, for lack of a better term. He feels his ancestors have called him back home to Judaism this past year after practicing Buddhism for most of his adult life. He is excited to continue this exploration into Jewish resilience and practice with this cohort. His work life centers around wealth redistribution and reparations. And, he has a cat named Lady Isis and is quite proud of his nacho crafting skills.
Janet Rae Jorgensen (Santa Rosa, CA) is privileged to live with her family and some sheep and chickens on Sonoma Mountain/Oonapais on Miwok land. These days, she is keen to embrace the quiet hours. When she makes time to sit, write, create art, laugh, and connect with friends, she feels joy and fulfillment. Janet Rae is honored to be a part of this cohort and for this opportunity to deepen her spiritual practice through a Jewish lens. Janet Rae is currently moving through a major life transition and believes in the power of possibility.
Susannah Rosenthal (New Orleans, LA)
Wendy Elisheva Somerson (Seattle, WA) is one of the founders of the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. They believe that combining art, activism, and ritual can help us envision and create the world to come. Based in the Pacific Northwest, they are a queer disabled politicized somatic healer who has been supporting individual and group healing from trauma and oppression in their practice since 2014. A writer and visual artist, they have written, published and organized around combating antisemitism and white nationalism, as well as forwarding the movement for justice in Palestine.
Alesandra Zsiba (Takoma Park, MD) Beginning at the heart level and spiraling out, Alesandra identifies as an artist, educator, activist, and social entrepreneur. As Founding Artist and Director of The Identity Project, Alesandra started and runs an intervention program in documentary storytelling and narrative practice for underserved youth throughout the Southwest US. Alesandra believes that creativity, and a connection to one’s capacity to create something original, are deeply healing and restorative forces. In addition to her work in arts education, Alesandra is a lover and teacher of Jewish mindfulness, and a guide on the path of integrative practice. This work has taken many shapes over the years, most recently reflected in her role as Director of the Jewish Mindfulness Center of Washington D.C. at Adas Israel Congregation.