Taproot comes from a deep longing of Jews alienated from their roots to sink deeper into the groundwaters of Jewish Spirituality as a source of meaning and relevance in our everyday lives. We serve an intergenerational group of educators, organizers, & artists to develop Jewish spiritual practices, creative strategies, and critical relationships for healing, resilience, and liberation. After three years of immersive, week-long retreats, we are offering a new program, designed to meet this moment and the emerging needs of our communities.
As we rise to the challenges and possibilities in these times of great unraveling and transformation, we ask ourselves: what are the Jewishly-sourced practices and rituals that we can draw on to nourish ourselves and our communities? How can we dip into the wells of Jewish mysticism to create rituals for our time? What rituals have the numbness of our traumas made empty for us, and how can we reclaim and reimagine them? What has been forgotten, relegated to dusty tomes, because the lineages of teachers who passed them from student to student were lost? What is the faith we’ve abandoned because we felt abandoned by it? How can we support community healers and ritualists in regenerating ceremony for this time? What would it look like to intentionally empower our Jewish spiritual leadership and care outside of professional clergy? How might doing so strengthen our communities, our movements for justice, our selves?
Community Ritualist Training Program
Our answer to the above questions is to host a year-long (December 2020 – December 2021) learning journey for Jewish leaders looking to deepen their own practice, weave their justice work and spirituality together, and gain the skills needed to offer meaningful, Jewishly-sourced ritual and spiritual care in their own communities, movement organizations, families, and daily lives. Find out more about the program HERE.
Who We Are
Rabbinic Faculty: Rabbi Diane Elliot, Rabbi Eli Herb, and Rabbi Irwin Keller
Stewards: David Bronstein, Adam Horowitz, Rachel Milford, Rachel Plattus, and Oren Slozberg
