BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//wp-events-plugin.com//7.3.3//EN TZID:America/New_York X-WR-TIMEZONE:America/New_York BEGIN:VEVENT UID:5761@tbzbrookline.org DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20250302T083000 DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20250302T153000 DTSTAMP:20250226T231517Z URL:https://www.tbzbrookline.org/events/13th-annual-tbz-womens-retreat-in- person-and-online/ SUMMARY:13th Annual TBZ Women's Retreat: Bat Mitzvah! (in person and online ) DESCRIPTION:\n13th Annual TBZ Women’s Retreat\nSunday\, March 2\, 2025\nF or 13 years\, TBZ women have come together to celebrate the experience of living Jewishly as women. This year\, we celebrate our Bat Mitzvah! Our se ssions will feature elements of the Bat Mitzvah experience\, including the party\, with kirtan and dance opportunities provided by Shemot Shelah\, f estive food by Chef Ariella Darsa Amshalem\, as well as the creative and s timulating offerings you’ve come to appreciate\, which will follow the s piritual outline of the tefillah (prayer) service. Participants will have the chance to study texts in chevruta (with a study partner) followed by R av Claudia\, Rav Tiferet\, and Rav Leah offering a “D’var Torah” on the meaning of those texts to them. Whether it’s your first time or your 13th time\, we hope you join this multigenerational celebration of womann ess\, set during International Women’s Month! \nSign up here by Sunday February 26th. (For TBZ Members only)\n \;\n\n\n\nSchedule for the Day \nClick the links below for more info\n\n \;\n\n8:30am Davening with R av Claudia &\; Rav Leah (prayer) (MultiAccess\, Sanctuary)\n\n9:00 Sust enance Break (light refreshments) (in-person only\, Community Room)\n\n9:1 5-9:45 Hachanah: A Beit Midrash Experience. (MultiAccess\, Community Room) \nParticipants learn preparatory texts together with a chevruta (study par tner) before the rabbis offer their thoughts on the texts\n9:45-10:30-Divr ei Torah: HERStories (MultiAccess\, Community Room)\nRav Claudia\, Rav Tif eret &\; Rav Leah share their teachings on the texts groups prepared in the previous preparatory session. \n10:30-Break\n\n10:45-11:30 Celebrati ng Presence in Body\nWe often don't notice the miracle of our bodies until we have a problem! Together\, let us marvel at what our bodies can do now \, with no judgement about what they cannot do and gratitude for what they could do in the past. Your options for celebration are: \n\n\n Feldenkr ais with TBZ Member Nancy Lipman (MultiAccess\, Meeting Room)\n\nMeditatio n\, a contemplative practice\, helps strengthen our ability to respond wis ely to this complex life and world. As we practice this challenging discip line together\, we continue to cultivate compassion\, loving kindness\, jo y\, and wisdom. All levels of meditators\, beginners and experienced\, are welcome!\nTBZ Member Nancy Lipman is a Guild Certified Feldenkrais® teac her and an Acupuncturist\, who\, for over 30 years\, has supported people to feel better and move with increased ease and energy. She practices in C ambridge and Roslindale.\n \;\n\n Nefesh: Soul Dance with Allison Tal lis (Sanctuary)\n\nNefesh is a guided improvisational movement practice th at engages somatic awareness to facilitate personal growth\, emotional wel l-being\, and collective healing. We enter in gently\, followed by a deepe r\, more visceral exploration\, and we end in deep relaxation. Understandi ng the body holds our inherited epigenetic patterns and our present\, we w ork with the body to release\, untangle\, and create new neural pathways t owards integration.\nAllison was named one of 2015 United States President ial Scholar's\, most influential teachers by the United States Secretary D epartment of Education. Allison served as the Department Head of Movement\ , Dance and Devising\, where she also taught movement at the Professional Performing Arts School of New York City. In her role as National Healing & amp\; Wellness Consultant &\; Practitioner for the Joyful Heart Foundat ion\, Allison co-developed and led programs\, workshops and retreats for s urvivors of sexual assault\, domestic violence and child abuse and the hea lers working on the frontlines of trauma\, addressing vicarious trauma. \ nAllison currently teaches at Down Under Yoga School in Boston. Allison co mpleted her Kundalini Yoga Therapy Certification module 1 and Level 1 Trau ma Resiliency Model certification. In addition\, Allison has a certificati on as a historical trauma specialist and as an Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapist.\n11:30-11:45 Break \n\n11:45-12:30 Creative Soul Expressions: Taste-a-Long with Ariella Darsa Amshalem (Community Room)\nTaste your way through the land of Persia\, the land of Queen Esther with other notable c ontemporary Jewish Persian women who are authors\, activists\, artists\, p rofessors and the work they have done to bring the issues the Jews of Iran have faced over the last hundred years to light.\nAriella is an American- Israeli Chef and Chef Instructor whose grandparents came from Istanbul and Izmir\, Turkey to New York City in the 1920s. Sephardic Jewish cuisine do minated and blessed her grandmother's kitchen\, where as a young girl Arie lla watched biscocchos\, bourekas\, fiveyos\, fritadas\, and roscas form l ike magic in her grandmother's hands.\n \;\n\n12:30-1:30-Lunch\, cater ed by Ora Catering (in person only\, Community Room)\n\n1:30-2:30 The Tora h of Identity\n\n Freeing the Writer Within with TBZ member Jordan Namero w (Multiaccess\, Meeting Room)\n\nRitual. Practice. Joy. These are central aspects of Bat Mitzvah. They're also at the heart of the writing process. Join Jordan Namerow for a writing workshop to engage with the complexity of your life by accessing language for what you love\, what you fear\, and what you value. Together\, we’ll engage in timed writing exercises in r esponse to prompts and explore how we can cultivate a daily writing practi ce to free the writer within each of us.\nJordan Namerow is a feminist wri ter\, strategic communications professional\, and facilitator. With nearly 20 years of experience\, she is passionate about helping teams and leader s deepen their impact at the nexus of storytelling and social change. Much of her work centers on helping women\, girls\, and LGBTQ people elevate t heir voices and claim their power to make the world more equitable for eve ryone.\nJordan earned a Bachelor’s in Sociology and Women’s Studies fr om Wellesley College\, a Master’s in Strategic Communications from Colum bia University\, and an Executive Certificate in Facilitation from Georget own University’s Institute for Transformational Leadership. She was awar ded the Schusterman Fellowship for Jewish leaders and serves as the Board President of Mayyim Hayyim: Living Waters Community Mikveh and Education C enter.\n\n\n You Are Who You Aren't: Masquerade Stories of Jewish Gender Performance with TBZ member Lori Lefkovich (Sanctuary)\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFrom J acob pretending to be Esau to that closeted queen\, Esther\, from Tamar's dressing up as a cult prostitute to Joseph's coats and tales and Moses rai sed a prince of Egypt\, identity deception is ubiquitous in the stories we tell about ourselves. Anticipating Purim\, we will talk about texts of id entity masquerade and ask about their implications for who we are\, and wh o we aren't.\n\n\n\nLori Hope Lefkovitz is the author of In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identity (Rowman &\; Littlefield Publis hers\, 2010)\, which was named a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awa rd in the category of Women’s Studies. Her awards include a Fulbright pr ofessorship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem\, an academic fellowship at the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis\, a Woodrow Wilson dis sertation fellowship in the Women’s Studies Division\, and a Golda Meir post-doctoral fellowship at Hebrew University. She was the founding direct or of Kolot\, the Center for Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies at the Re constructionist Rabbinical College\, where she held a chair in Gender and Judaism\, and is the founding executive editor of the website\, ritualwell .org. Professor Lefkovitz holds a BA from Brandeis University and an MA an d PhD from Brown University. Her books include: Shaping Losses: Cultural M emory and the Holocaust (with Julia Epstein)\, Textual Bodies: Changing Bo undaries of Literary Representation\, and The Character of Beauty in the V ictorian Novel. She is widely published in the fields of literature\, crit ical theory\, and Jewish feminist studies\, serves on editorial\, professi onal\, and community boards\, and lectures widely in academic and Jewish c ontexts.\n2:30-3:30 The Simcha (joy): Shemot Shelah Kirtan (Multiaccess\, Sanctuary)\nShemot Shelah is a Jewish kirtan band offering Hebrew call-and -response chanting with feminine and non-binary names for the Divine. Kirt an is a devotional practice that opens the heart and paves the way for sta tes of bliss and peace. At the peak of each chant\, our style of kirtan cl osely resembles the long-lost Jewish women's practice of aynraysn\, crying out\, or literally\, tearing down\, and gives participants the opportunit y to call out to the Divine from the depths of their hearts. \nStorytelli ng plays a part in each event\, as storyteller Anna Sobel brings to light historical women's practices that relate to our form of chanting. Every ti me we sing together\, we highlight a specific woman from Jewish history\, tell her story\, and invite her in.\n \;\n\n3:30-3:45 Closing Circle ( Multiaccess\, Sanctuary)\n\n ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://www.tbzbrookline.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2024/05/WomensRetreat25Square.png CATEGORIES:Adult Learning,Featured,Homepage Featured LOCATION:Temple Beth Zion\, 1566 Beacon St.\, Brookline\, MA\, 02446-2209\, United States X-APPLE-STRUCTURED-LOCATION;VALUE=URI;X-ADDRESS=1566 Beacon St.\, Brookline \, MA\, 02446-2209\, United States;X-APPLE-RADIUS=100;X-TITLE=Temple Beth Zion:geo:0,0 END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York X-LIC-LOCATION:America/New_York BEGIN:STANDARD DTSTART:20241103T010000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0400 TZOFFSETTO:-0500 TZNAME:EST END:STANDARD END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR