Temple Israel, 6:30–8:30 pm
Saturday, February 25, 2012
137 NE 19th Street, Miami, FL

Join Ruach and Nehirim for a fascinating, fabulous, and fun evening of Jewish learning, spirituality… and food. We’ll begin at 6:30 with a short Havdalah service, marking the end of the Shabbat and ringing in a new week. Then we’ll enjoy a festive “Melaveh Malkah” Saturday evening dinner with delicious catered food.

From 7:30 to 8:30, we’ll do an hour of interactive “speed-learning” on Jewish queer texts, done in paired “chevruta” style. Finally, if you haven’t had enough, some of us will join Next@19th’s “CHAIku” program at 9pm, featuring Jay’s ecstatic and energetic queer Jewish poetry and music. Bring your own 17-syllable celebrations of queer Jewish experience to share.

All this plus a diverse community of LGBT Jews, families, friends, and allies (straight allies and non-Jewish partners welcome too!).

Cost is $25 (which covers the costs of the dinner) or $18 no-questions-asked discounted rate. No one turned away for lack of funds. RSVP by February 10. CHAIku is free.

UIC Student Center East Register Here
750 South Halsted #100, Chicago, IL

Limmud Chicago is dedicated to the creation of engaging opportunities to experience and celebrate Jewish learning and culture. Limmud is the Hebrew word for “learning.”

Limmud Chicago is a cross-denominational, multi-generational grassroots organization of tireless volunteers from a variety of Jewish backgrounds, circumstances, affiliations, denominations and orientations. Together, participants explore all facets of Jewish life, identity and culture following the Limmud model, in which everyone has something to learn, and everyone has something to teach, and the entire community has something to gain.

Jay Michaelson will lead two sessions at Limmud Chicago:

God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality
Religious people should support equality for gays and lesbians not despite their religion — but because of it. The handful of Biblical verses sometimes used against LGBT people are ambiguous, and subject to interpretation. This means that the real question is not “what about Leviticus?” but “what are our fundamental values about sexuality and intimacy?” In this text-based and no-holds-barred discussion, scholar and activist, author of the new bestselling book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, discusses his own personal journey of acceptance and affirmation, and how the overwhelming majority of our religious values support inclusion of LGBT people. Plenty of time will be allowed for questions and conversation.

God Does Not Exist, God is Existence Itself: An Introduction to Nondual Judaism
God-concepts evolve over time. In the beginning, our ancestors were polytheists, animists, and nature-worshippers. Later, they developed monotheistic notions of one God in the sky, and a philosophical monotheism of one unchanging deity. Still later, they came to see God as Ein Sof — without end — even filling every molecule in your brain and thinking your thoughts. This nondual (“not-two”) view is strikingly similar to non-Western concepts of non-self (i.e., that the notion that you are a separate “self” is only one way of looking at things) and contemporary neurological accounts of the brain and mind. This workshop explores some of these ideas.

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 7 pm
Champaign, IL

Religious people should support equality for gays and lesbians not despite religion — but because of it.

So writes Jay Michaelson in his new bestselling book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, which Publisher’s Weekly called “a salvo in the case for equality” and which was recently #1 in gay/lesbian nonfiction on Amazon.com.

Contrary to the myth that the Bible prohibits homosexuality (the myth of “God versus gay”), Michaelson shows how the handful of Biblical verses sometimes used against LGBT people are ambiguous, and subject to interpretation. The real question, he says, is not “what about Leviticus?” but what values cause us to choose one interpretation or another, and how we as human beings grow when we encounter other people.

In this text-based and no-holds-barred discussion, Michaelson discusses his own personal journey of acceptance and affirmation, and how the overwhelming majority of our religious values support inclusion of LGBT people. Plenty of time will be allowed for questions and conversation.

Religious people should support equality for gays and lesbians not despite religion — but because of it. Contrary to the myth that the Bible prohibits homosexuality (the myth of “God versus gay”) actually the handful of Biblical verses sometimes used against LGBT people are ambiguous, and subject to interpretation. The real question is not “what about Leviticus?” but what values cause us to choose one interpretation or another, and how we as human beings grow when we encounter other people.

In this text-based and no-holds-barred discussion, scholar and activist Jay Michaelson, author of the new bestselling book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, discusses his own personal journey of acceptance and affirmation, and how the overwhelming majority of our religious values support inclusion of LGBT people. Plenty of time will be allowed for questions and conversation.

Nehirim is a Jewish organization, but many of our participants do not identify as religious.  We welcome cultural Jews, questioning Jews, secular Jews, and confused Jews.

Religion and spirituality are central parts of what we do, but we are not coercive in any way, and non-religious folks will find plenty of people like them at every Nehirim retreat.  Religiously speaking, a Nehirim retreat is among the most Jewishly pluralistic places you’ll ever find: we have secular and cultural Jews, we have Orthodox Jews, including some Hasidim; we have conservative, Reform, and non-denominational Jews, we have Reconstructionist Jews, and Renewal Jews; we have Jews by choice, questioning Jews, and atheist Jews. We truly have Jews of all stripes and ethnicities, and a large number of multi-faith families whom we fully welcome and include.

In terms of our own religious practice, our retreats feature traditional davening (prayer) and learning, as well as alternative spiritual practices, such as meditation and yoga. Our workshops range from innovative panels on queer theory to beit midrash (traditional Jewish school) style of learning. We are proud to have many queer Jews who are doing their first “Jewish thing” in decades—and we are careful to translate and transliterate all the Hebrew we use.

What if I’m not Jewish?

First, Nehirim welcomes non-Jewish family members or partners of any retreat participant.  Studies of the LGBT Jewish community shows that we have more multifaith families than the Jewish community in general, and Nehirim is fully welcoming and inclusive of such families (including couples, however defined).

Second, if you are in or exploring a conversion process, you are also very welcome to join us.  Chances are, you will find other future- or potential- Jews by choice at our retreats.  Definitely, you will find those who have made the choice already!

Third, if you identify as Jewish, you are very welcome to join us, even if that identification may not be recognized by all Jews (e.g. if your father but not your mother is Jewish).  Nehirim does not have a halachic standard of Jewishness which participants must meet.  If you identify as Jewish, that is good enough for us.

So what about everyone else?  While Nehirim is a Jewish organization, there is no “test.”  We do use first-person plural language (“we”) to talk about Jewish identity, and we do affirmatively make a default assumption that that identity is shared by most if not all retreat participants.  It is a “Jewish retreat.”  However, non-Jews are welcome to join our community, as long as this understanding of ‘Jewish space’ is maintained.  As you may know, proselytizing to non-Jews is forbidden by Jewish law, and we respect that norm.  However, if you feel yourself called to a Nehirim retreat, rest assured that you are welcome to join us, and that no one from Nehirim will treat you any differently from our other participants.  Inclusion is what we are about!

At our gender-specific retreats (i.e. men’s and women’s), we invite people to self-define their gender.  If you identify as a man or a woman, please come to the right retreat for you.   These retreats are organized by gender, not by sex or anatomy.  If you identify as neither a man nor a woman, you are welcome to come to the retreat, with the understanding that we’ll use the pronoun “we” to refer to the community of men or women (as appropriate) and hold that gender identity in common.

At all our retreats, we include guidelines on creating safe space (assumptions, pronouns, consent, privacy, etc.) in our retreat packets, and have a zero-tolerance policy for transphobia.  That’s not to say that every retreat participant lives up to our ideals; probably at least one person will say something inappropriate at some point, at which point our retreat staff would be happy to engage that person in a supportive conversation about inclusion.

Beyond inclusion, we are interested in celebrating the distinctive perspectives and gifts of genderqueer folk to the Jewish community.  We’re proud to have faculty members like Noach Dzmura, author of Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in the Jewish Community, and transgender pioneer Dr. Joy Ladin.  If you are genderqueer and planning to come to a Nehirim retreat, we want to encourage you to offer a workshop or share your story with our participants.

Religious people should support equality for gays and lesbians not despite religion — but because of it.  Contrary to the myth that the Bible prohibits homosexuality (the myth of “God versus gay”) actually the handful of Biblical verses sometimes used against LGBT people are ambiguous, and subject to interpretation. The real question is not “what about Leviticus?” but what values cause us to choose one interpretation or another, and how we as human beings grow when we encounter other people.

In this text-based and no-holds-barred discussion, scholar and activist Jay Michaelson, author of the new bestselling book God vs. Gay?  The Religious Case for Equality, discusses his own personal journey of acceptance and affirmation, and how the overwhelming majority of our religious values support inclusion of LGBT people. Plenty of time will be allowed for questions and conversation.

Religious people should support equality for gays and lesbians not despite religion — but because of it. Contrary to the myth that the Bible prohibits homosexuality (the myth of “God versus gay”) actually the handful of Biblical verses sometimes used against LGBT people are ambiguous, and subject to interpretation. The real question is not “what about Leviticus?” but what values cause us to choose one interpretation or another, and how we as human beings grow when we encounter other people.

In this text-based and no-holds-barred discussion, scholar and activist Jay Michaelson, author of the new bestselling book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, discusses his own personal journey of acceptance and affirmation, and how the overwhelming majority of our religious values support inclusion of LGBT people. Plenty of time will be allowed for questions and conversation.

Religious people should support equality for gays and lesbians not despite religion — but because of it. Contrary to the myth that the Bible prohibits homosexuality (the myth of “God versus gay”) actually the handful of Biblical verses sometimes used against LGBT people are ambiguous, and subject to interpretation. The real question is not “what about Leviticus?” but what values cause us to choose one interpretation or another, and how we as human beings grow when we encounter other people.

In this text-based and no-holds-barred discussion, scholar and activist Jay Michaelson, author of the new bestselling book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, discusses his own personal journey of acceptance and affirmation, and how the overwhelming majority of our religious values support inclusion of LGBT people. Plenty of time will be allowed for questions and conversation.

Religious people should support equality for gays and lesbians not despite religion — but because of it. Contrary to the myth that the Bible prohibits homosexuality (the myth of “God versus gay”) actually the handful of Biblical verses sometimes used against LGBT people are ambiguous, and subject to interpretation. The real question is not “what about Leviticus?” but what values cause us to choose one interpretation or another, and how we as human beings grow when we encounter other people.

In this text-based and no-holds-barred discussion, scholar and activist Jay Michaelson, author of the new bestselling book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality, discusses his own personal journey of acceptance and affirmation, and how the overwhelming majority of our religious values support inclusion of LGBT people. Plenty of time will be allowed for questions and conversation.