Event Registration
You do not need to register for sessions in advance. All sessions will be open for your participation during the event.
Breakout Session #1—4:45–6:00 PM
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Matt Ponak—Sacred Singing Circle
OFJCC Room G-103
Music has been described in Jewish mysticism as a universal key that can unlock even the most stubborn doors on the spiritual journey. Join Jewish musician Matt Ponak as he leads us in sacred singing inspired by the niggun tradition of wordless melodies. No prior knowledge of the songs is necessary: just join the circle and sink in...
Matt Ponak is a rabbinical student and musician who teaches Jewish spirituality to people of all backgrounds. A meditator and spiritual mentor, Matt's rabbinical studies focus on Kabbalah and Hassidic texts. Check out Bridges of Song, Matt's Bluegrass Niggun album on Spotify or Amazon Music.
- Julie Emden—T'shuva Movement and Dance
OFJCC Fitness Center, Building A, Main Studio, First Floor
Discover your own moving body as a resource for a return to a deeper connection to yourself on all levels—mind, body, heart and spirit. Guided by a carefully crafted music playlist based upon the theme of 'Return', and via gentle movement focused on alignment and flow, we will experience T'shuva from the inside out. Please wear layered clothes in which you can easily move. No prior movement or dance experience is necessary.
Julie Emden is the Founding Director of Embodied Jewish Learning in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is passionate about awakening the body as a gateway to inner knowing and guides others in somatic explorations of Jewish wisdom teachings as a resource for living in balance and wholeness.
- Barbara Gottesman—Mussar and a Study on Forgiveness
OFJCC Room G-100
The act of forgiveness, while cleansing, is not easy to do, and yet year after year we are asked to give and request it as a major theme of the High Holidays. Learn what our tradition teaches about forgiveness, including a formula that has been reflected in modern psychology today. Why is it important? What does it accomplish? And how does t'shuvah ('repentance' from the Hebrew root for return) play into all of this?
Barbara Gottesman is an executive and leadership coach, speaker trainer, author and former attorney who has recently discovered the enlightening magic of Mussar. She was certified by the Mussar Institute in 2018, has taught several Mussar classes at the OFJCC and elsewhere, and has found the practice of Mussar to be transformative for both herself and her students.
- Tova Birnbaum—Text Study in Hebrew: A Golden Rope on the Heel: The Other Yom Kippur we Didn't Know About
OFJCC Room D-129
שרשרת זהב על העקב: יום כיפור שלא הכרנו
יום כיפור בבית המקדש השני היה דרמה מתוזמנת ומתוזמרת היטב. הכהן הגדול כשחקן הראשי החליף את בגדיו שוב ושוב, הקפיד על כללי טקס מדויקים וסיכן את חייו עבור כל העם. מה ניתן ללמוד מתוך התהליך העתיק הזה על תהליכי התשובה שלנו ומה היינו רוצים כקהילה לחדש ולשחזר מימי קדם?
Tova Birnbaum is the Director of Jewish Content at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto.
Breakout Session #2—7:00–8:15 PM
- Julie Emden—Yoga for Yom Kippur
OFJCC Fitness Center, Building A, Yoga Studio, Second Floor
Experience the Shabbat of Return with a gentle Iyengar-based yoga and movement practice, infused with wisdom teachings rooted in Jewish mystical tradition. This entire workshop will be a yoga practice based upon the theme of turning inward and returning to our highest intentions for the new year. Please wear layered clothes in which you can easily move. No prior yoga experience is necessary.
Julie Emden is the Founding Director of Embodied Jewish Learning in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is passionate about awakening the body as a gateway to inner knowing and guides others in somatic explorations of Jewish wisdom teachings as a resource for living in balance and wholeness.
- Dan Libenson—Tidy Up Your Life on Yom Kippur: Making Marie Kondo Jewish
OFJCC Room G-100
The ancient Jews didn't invent fasting. They took a practice that already existed and turned it into a central ritual for one of the major holidays. They saw it as an effective tool for the real work of Yom Kippur, which is taking stock of our lives and making decisions about what to stop doing and what to start doing, so that we can live the lives we want to and ought to live in the year ahead. Fasting is not the point of Yom Kippur, as the prophet Isaiah clearly states (Isaiah 58:3-14); it is merely a tool. Marie Kondo's approach to tidying up our physical spaces is a contemporary tool that we might be able to Judaize and apply to metaphysical spaces. In this session, we will explore and practice what it might look like to develop a new set of Jewish rituals for Yom Kippur, based on the KonMari Method, that might work even better than fasting!
Dan Libenson is the co-host of the Judaism Unbound podcast, one of the most-downloaded Jewish podcasts with well over one million downloads to date. He is currently working on a book about radical creativity and the Jewish future.
- Ariel Resnikoff—Yom Kippur Poetry: Creative Reading and Writing
OFJCC Room D-129
The radical Hebrew poet, Avot Yeshurun, was born on Yom Kippur, 1904. For Yeshurun, Yom Kippur functions as a conceptual poetic axis upon which he imagines himself in the midst of the catastrophic twentieth century. In this session, we will read, discuss and respond in our own language to Yeshurun's final poem Ptakh ne'ila (Open Closing), as a means of reconciling for ourselves the stakes of this coming Yom Kippur, amidst the local and global catastrophic conditions we still (continuously) face in the contemporary moment.
Ariel Resnikoff is a poet, scholar, translator and educator who completed his doctorate in comparative literature and literary theory at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019. Ariel has taught courses on multilingual diasporic literatures at the Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing (UPenn) and at BINA: The Jewish Movement for Social Change.
- Zoe Jick—Text Study in English: "Jonah, Son of Truth"
OFJCC Room G-103
You might be familiar with the story of Jonah and the Whale. Why is this story part of the Bible readings for Yom Kippur? Together, we will do a close story of Jonah, and discover some of the story's relevant themes and deeper messages.
Zoe Jick is the Associate Director of Jewish Content at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto.