Topics available for speaking engagements

A CHILD’S GEOGRAPHY OF THE SACRED

All children have a spiritual life, a natural religious curiosity and an innate sense of awe of the universe. They call God out of their place, and the place where they stand is holy. Despite our children’s desire to talk about God and an innate ability to deal with theological ideas, religious education is often ineffective in nurturing the spiritual life of children. Learn more about children’s natural spirituality and how to nurture the imagination of their souls.

NURTURING THE SPIRITUAL IMAGINATION OF OUR CHILDREN

Our society does a very good job of educating our children to be consumers and competitors. How do we nurture their innate spiritual life, teach them to be gracious and grateful, to have courage in difficult times, to have a sense of purpose? There are many programs that help our children exercise their bodies and their minds. This workshop will explore ways to give children a language to talk about the big questions of life, to exercise their souls. In process we will discover that our own souls are nurtured as well.

Come journey to the places of our children’s spirit and learn how, as parents and grandparents, to nurture the imagination of their souls.

TELL ME A STORY: READING AND THE RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION OF CHILDREN

Teaching spirituality through children’s narrative is a powerful vehicle for nurturing the spirit. Join in a conversation with the author of over 25 award-winning children’s books. Learn how children’s literature can be a window to teaching spiritual values and ideas and how you as a parent, grandparent or teacher can help develop your children’s religious imagination.

MIDRASH AS A TOOL FOR SPIRITUAL REFLECTION

Customarily, when we read the Bible we listen to its ancient words, allowing it to tell us our ancestors’ stories. But the rabbis believed that the Bible spoke to every generation anew and allowed it stories to enter their lives and they let their lives enter the story. They created midrash, an imaginative body of literature, which enriched the Biblical narrative and kept it fresh and vital. Listen to how the words of Scripture spoke to others before us and then consider what would it mean to read the Bible by allowing it to help us tell the stories of our lives? What if we read our joys, our fears and our doubts into the biblical narrative?

FILLING IN THE BLANKS: HOW WOMEN READ THE BIBLE

In the Bible we find stories of women who have no names and names of women who have no stories. We see these women through the eyes of the male characters in their life. What would it mean to pour a woman’s soul into Scripture and to allow our ancestral mothers to tell their own stories? Listen and learn from these Biblical voices that have long been silent.

WOMEN AND JUDAISM: A PERSONAL JOURNEY

Jewish feminism began in the early 1970’s. When I entered rabbinical school in 1969 Jewish feminism was an oxymoron. Join one of the first women rabbis on a journey through the decades to discover how women’s perspective has altered the Jewish landscape in prayer, ritual, communal leadership and research. What are the issues today and where we are heading in the next century?