Jay Michaelson, Executive Director

Jay Michaelson (www.metatronics.net) is the executive director of Nehirim: GLBT Jewish Culture and Spirituality (www.nehirim.org), the founding editor of Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture (www.zeek.net), a Ph. D candidate in Jewish Thought at Hebrew University and a recent Visiting Professor at Boston University Law School. He is the author of God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice (Jewish Lights, 2006) and Another Word for Sky: Poems (Lethe Press, 2007). He is presently a columnist for the Forward, Zeek, American Jewish Life, Reality Sandwich, and Maariv Online, and his work has appeared in Slate, the Jerusalem Post, and other publications. His next book is Nondual Judaism (Shambhala, 2009).

For the last ten years, Jay has been a leading advocate for the inclusion of sexual minorities in religious communities, and writes and teaches frequently on issues of sexuality and religion. His work on the subject has appeared on NPR, and in Tikkun, Blithe House Quarterly, the Jerusalem Post, the Duke Law Review, the Michigan Journal of Gender & Law, and anthologies including Mentsh: On Being Jewish and Queer (2004), Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice (2007) and Jews and Sex (2008). Jay is a proud member of New York's "Pride in the Pulpit" project, the Easton Mountain advisory board, the White Crane editorial board, and the Burning Man, Radical Faeries, and Body Electric communities. Jay has also been a scholar in residence at dozens of synagogues and community centers around the country, and wrote the Coming Out ritual for the Human Rights Campaign. He holds a BA from Columbia, an MA from Hebrew University, and a JD from Yale Law School. Finally, he is spending most of the next year on meditation retreat.

Sasha T. Goldberg, Assistant Director

Sasha T. Goldberg is a Jewish educator currently pursuing a Masters Degree in Judaism at The Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Prior to joining Nehirim in 2007, she taught grades K-12 in Religious Schools and led Jewish teen retreats. Sasha takes a hands-on approach to integrating social justice into the curriculum of Jewish learning, teaching, and practice. She has a long history of advocacy, spanning grass-roots to board room, most recently serving on the Volunteer Action Committee board as well as the Young Adult's Division board of the Jewish Community Federation of the East Bay.

At The Graduate Theological Union, Sasha has a strong focus on issues of Chaplaincy, Pastoral Care and Grief. In the fall of September 2008, she will lead a Jewish Grief Group for GLBTQ Jews at Congregation Sha'ar Zahaav in San Francisco. Her other areas of interest include the intersections between religious and secular practices of Judaism, and finding ways to draw in the unaffiliated. Out in the queer world, Sasha has organized conferences, film festivals, presentations, and workshops, and she has spoken extensively on sexuality, gender and identity.

A native Chicagoan and a Midwesterner at heart, Sasha now happily makes her home in San Francisco. In her spare time, Sasha enjoys all things Jewish, including her girlfriend, and some things not so typically Jewish, like playing ice hockey.

Shoshana Jedwab, Program Associate

Shoshana Jedwab is a prize winning Jewish educator and the Jewish Studies Coordinator at the A.J. Heschel Middle School in NYC. She is the founding facilitator of the Makom Drum Circle at the JCC in Manhattan and is a percussionist and performance artist who has trained in bibliodrama and psychodrama. Shoshana has provided empowering drum circles to singles, student, training, and bereavement groups. Shoshana has performed with: Storahtelling, Chana Rothman, Debbie Friedman, Akiva Wharton, A Song of Solomon, Hebrew Mystical Chant with the Kirtan Rabbi, Andrew Hahn, and Tel Shemesh seasonal events.

Zvi Bellin, Student Outreach Coordinator

Zvi Bellin has, for the past six years, led a variety of workshops on Jewish spirituality and mysticism. He holds an M.A. in Counseling and Guidance from NYU, and is studying for his PhD in Pastoral Counseling at Loyola College, Maryland. He has worked as a therapist in a number of mental health settings, and has interned as a Psychiatric Chaplain. Zvi's most recent interests include the spirituality of "dark places" and the formation of meaning outside the "normal and acceptable." He is a co-founder of the Silver Spring Moishe House, a Jewish community house sponsored by the Forest Foundation.

Rabbi Julia Watts Belser, Nehirim West Retreat Director

As a spiritual teacher and facilitator, Julia Watts Belser strives to blend passionate scholarship with prophetic witness, teaching classic Jewish texts in a way that speak to our contemporary longings. Julia has taught in diverse university, synagogue, and community-based settings, including the Graduate Theological Union, The Leaven Center for Spirituality and Social Change, and the Masorti Lehrhaus in Berlin, Germany. As a writer and Jewish ritualist, Julia is engaged in crafting feminist theology and nurturing earth-based Jewish practice. She works as an anti-oppression educator and activist for LGBT issues, anti-racism, and disability rights. She has co-authored A Health Handbook for Women with Disabilities, published by Hesperian Foundation and distributed to grassroots groups and health workers around the world. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Midstream: A Journal of Jewish Thought; The Journal of Women and Religion, Kalliope: A Journal of Women's Art and Literature; and Fireweed: A Feminist Quarterly.
Julia just received rabbinic ordination from the transdenominational Academy for Jewish Religion, CA in Los Angeles. She is finishing her Ph.D. in rabbinic literature in the Joint Doctoral Program in Jewish Studies at the University of California Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union.

Gideon Querido van Frank, Queer Shabbaton Director

Born in Tel Aviv in the sweet seventies, Gideon Querido van Frank graduated from the University of Utrecht and Amsterdam in Cultural Studies and Literary Theory and at New York University received an M.A. in Performance Theory. In New York he worked for The New York Annual Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and as a journalist for BBC World. Back in Amsterdam Gideon worked as a freelance journalist for several magazines and writes mainly about film, politics and culture. Gideon is head of the press and publicity department of Cinemien ( www.cinemien.nl), a film distribution company of Indie movies. Gideon has organized two Queer Shabbatonim in Amsterdam, to be followed by one in New York in October, 2007.

Next: Meet our faculty.