Facilitators
Cherina Eisenberg, Massachusetts
Rabbi Cherina Eisenberg is ordained through ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal and received her M.A. in Jewish Education from JTS. A noted speaker and teacher, she has presented programs at Harvard University, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and at synagogues and Jewish institutions nationally. A liturgical composer, energy healer, salsa dancer and certified chef, Rabbi Cherina brings a creative and innovative approach to Jewish spirituality and wellness. She is the founder of Hot Pink Torah, a sacred space for women to awaken to their Divine power and pleasure through Jewish gems of wisdom. For more information or to contact, please visit HotPinkTorah.com.
Eva Ifrah, Montreal
Eva is an educator with an MA in education and a passion for sharing healing arts of all kinds. She has been teaching and enjoying the benefits of yoga for over twenty years. Her style blends various eclectic traditions (Hatha, Kundalini, Ashtanga, Yin, Restorative & more).
Jordania Goldberg, Montreal
Rabbi Jordania recently moved to Laval by way of the Unites States, England and Israel. She co-officiates services internationally while maintaining her virtual-care counseling practice at ipathcounseling.com. Her recent book, KSTechnique, Healing the World One Person at a Time, is a culmination of her life’s work in Kabbalah and the healing arts. Rabbinic work, counseling and teaching are heart-felt passions that continue to burn a path of exploration and discovery.
Rabbi Schachar Orenstein, Montreal
Rabbi Schachar Orenstein has served as a congregational rabbi for many years in both Vancouver and Montreal. He presently serves as Co-Executive Director of Aleph Canada. He co-founded Teva Quebec, Quebec's first Jewish Environmental Organization. A certified yin yoga and restorative yoga instructor, he enjoys accompanying his classes with his guitar.
Meira Alper, Montreal
Meira Alper is a transformational educator and healerMeira Alper, Montreal whose mission in the world is to help people to connect with their highest purpose. She is a Registered Nurse, Integrative Wellness Coach, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Trauma Informed Educator. She uses storytelling, chanting, meditation, sacred movement and Somatic Experiencing as a way to calm the body and mind, remove blocks and connect with our highest potential.
Rabbi Sherril Gilbert, Montreal
Rabbi Sherril Gilbert has served congregations in Newfoundland and Labrador and Montreal, Quebec. A native Montrealer, she is Co-Executive Director of ALEPH Canada, and works in the larger community as rabbi, rabbinic chaplain, spiritual director and adult educator. With deep intention and joyful creativity, Rabbi Sherril weaves wisdom teachings, chant, ecology, poetry and percussion into lifecycle rituals and spiritual practices.
Nadia Stolpner, Toronto
Nadia Stolpner, MSW RSW, is a registered social worker, body-oriented psychotherapist, dance therapy student, and mindfulness teacher. A life-long dancer, she has fallen in love with dance and movement as a contemplative practice in the “Merkavat Ha-Makhol Institute for Embodied Spirituality” at Isabella Friedman Jewish Retreat Centre in Connecticut 11 years ago and has been facilitating classes that combine conscious dance and Jewish spirituality since then. She lives in Toronto, Canada. http://www.nadiastolpner.com/mikdash www.facebook.com/Mikdash-107474727476819
Rabbi Hanna Tiferet Siegel, Vancouver
Rabbi Hanna Tiferet Siegel is a poet and mystic through whom song and inspiration flow. She has recorded eight CDs of original liturgical music that soothes the soul and lifts the spirit. In 1982, she was the first woman to receive the title of Eshet Hazon / Woman of Vision and Miyaledet Neshama / Midwife of the Soul. She received ordination as a Rabbinic Pastor in 1992 from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Rabbinical Ordination in 2003. The same year, she also earned a Masters of Jewish Studies at Hebrew College in Boston, MA.
Rabbi Hanna co-founded Or Shalom Synagogue in Vancouver, BC with her husband, Rabbi Daniel Siegel, from 1977-1987. They helped to revitalize the Upper Valley Jewish Community in Hanover, NH and then served as co-spiritual leaders for B’nai Or Jewish Renewal Community of Boston, MA. She currently serves as a Mashpi’ah Ruchanit / Spiritual Guide in the ALEPH clergy program.
Fran Avni, Montreal
Fran Avni has been creating original music for more than four decades. Her varied career covers everything from early childhood literacy songs to traditional and contemporary Hebrew melodies.
She is known for her warm welcoming vocals, creating instant harmonies, with her infectious and engaging sense of syncopation, multi-layering of voices and inclusion of all voices through drones, chants and simple melodic lines.
Her online sessions "Harmony Happenings” and “Music for Monotones” enable her to work with diverse groups of people. Fran invites and encourages everyone to lift up their voices and sing together with joy and spirit.
Cantor Heather Batchelor, Montreal
Hailing from Minneapolis MN, Cantor Heather Batchelor is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary in NYC. She has served congregations in Quebec and throughout the United States. Cantor Heather has an extensive background in theatre, dance and music, and is active in Montreal’s local Klezmer and Yiddish arts scene. Cantor Heather is a hevraya of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and a certified Jewish Meditation instructor.
https://cantorheatherbatchelor.com/
cantorheather@gmail.com
Dr. Avi Craimer, Toronto
Avi is a meditation teacher, spiritual guide, and founding CEC director. After graduate study in philosophy at the University of British Columbia and Georgetown University, Avi experienced a profound shift in consciousness led to him toward hard-core contemplative practice and training as a spiritual director (a spiritual director is a professional who accompanies and supports others on their spiritual journey.) Since then, Avi has helped many people of different backgrounds to pursue spiritual practices. He wrote and recorded meditations for chronic pain which were used in a major study of cancer survivors by researchers at UBC. He is also a content creator and writer for the Calm meditation app. He has led meditation workshops for organizations and companies around Toronto.
info@avicraimer.com
Rabbi Hannah Dresner, Vancouver
Rabbi Hannah Dresner, MFA, serves Vancouver’s Jewish Renewal community, Or Shalom, as full-time spiritual leader. A Kenisa fellow and a clergy fellow of the Institute for Jewish spirituality, Rabbi Hannah has been identified by CLAL as a rabbinic agent of change. Her homiletic speaking and writing, teaching of meditation, niggun, and art as spiritual practice, serve a Judaism that integrates experiences of head, heart and physical being, addressing the breadth of our human needs.
www.orshalom.ca
rabbihannah@orshalom.ca
Audi Gozlan, Montreal
Audi is the founder of Kabalah Yoga, a unique style of Hatha yoga that fuses the ancient mysticism of Kabalah with the practice of Yoga. He is the host and creator of the Kabalah Yoga Show aired daily in Canada on the "One: Body & Mind Channel".
Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan, Vancouver
Rabbi Laura Duhan-Kaplan is Director of Inter-Religious Studies at the Vancouver School of Theology and Rabbi Emerita of Or Shalom. She is an award-winning educator with thirty years experience teaching philosophy, hatha yoga, and spirituality. Rabbi Laura is author of The Infinity Inside: Jewish Spiritual Practice Through a Multi-faith Lens. She blogs at www.sophiastreet.com.
Ann Bekooy, Toronto
Ann Bekooy is a multi talented artist in the realm of singer/songwriter/author/storyteller. Ann has created and performed many theatre pieces and musical shows and performed in Toronto and Montreal as well as Amsterdam, Costa Rica, and the Bahamas.
Ann is also a spiritual seeker and began her spiritual journey at the tender age of eighteen travelling to India and Nepal where she lived the life of a hippie and seeker of esoteric wisdom
To that end she has studied with the following famous teachers: Neem Karoil Baba, Goenka, Thub Them Yeshi Lama, Shlomo Carlbach, Baba Ram Das, and sufi teachers Pir Vilayat Khan and Sheik Suleiman Dede, all of whom she met and studied with in the flesh.
Ann is a former Workshop leader in Sacred Dance and Spiritual Chants where she animated and led groups of up 25 to 30 people in Circle Dances and Sacred chants of many spiritual traditions bringing laughter and joy to a sometimes serious spiritual ritual.
Ann Bekooy has written three books, and directed a short film “Isolation” which showed at the Art Gallery of Ontario as part of the Rendez Vous with Madness Festival 2019.
Elisa Hollenberg, Toronto
Elisa Hollenberg, Toronto
Elisa is passionate about bringing 5Rhythms® to people who crave and want more movement and self-expression in their everyday lives. She has been dancing since the age of 5, dipping her toes into as many movement practices as she could find (ballet, contemporary, South African gumboot dancing, hula hoop, yoga, ecstatic dance) and now the 5Rhythms, since 2002. In recent years, Elisa founded and co-directed Create-Move-Connect, a community-based dance project to transform improvisation into choreography and performance. Elisa offers recreation and expressive arts facilitation for individuals and groups and performs and teaches with Truly Connecting Playback Theatre.
“I live and work in a big city context where I try to connect hearts to hearts and bring embodied presence into daily life.”
Elisa is a certified and accredited member of the 5Rhythms Teachers Association.
Yael Osiek, Vancouver
Yael is the founder of Kavanah Yoga and Meditation®, which combines Jewish meditation tools with evidence-based yoga techniques, to help students learn and practice the connection between body, mind, and soul. Yael guides students in achieving balance, resilience, and peace, coming from within.
Yael is a certified and registered yoga therapist and yoga teacher, yoga teacher trainer and yoga therapist trainer, Hormone Yoga therapist, trauma-informed yoga therapist, yoga and meditation therapist at the Canadian Cancer Society, and Jewish meditation teacher.
She first learned about Jewish meditation when she had the honour to meet and study with Reb Zalman, thirty years ago. Since then, she has been inspired to study Kabbalistic meditations and traditional prayers, and to incorporate them into her practice and sessions.
Yael teaches private and group yoga, meditation, and yoga therapy sessions at Yael Yoga® studios (Vancouver and North Vancouver), online, and at synagogues and retreats.
yael@yaelyoga.ca
Dr. Aubrey Glazer, Montreal
Dr. Aubrey L. Glazer, author of God-Knows-Everything-Broken: The Great (Gnostic) Americana Songbook of Bob Dylan (available through this hyperlink ideally:) https://www.amazon.com/God-Knows-Everything-Broken-Americana/dp/107349537X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Glazer+God+Knows+Everything+is+Broken&qid=1610490412&sr=8-1
Aubrey is senior rabbi of Congregation Shaare Zion, (Montreal, Canada) and director of Panui (San Francisco, California), an incubator for contemplative practice and conscious community building. Aubrey has dedicated decades researching, publishing, teaching and performing piyyut in many incarnations as well as translating and collaborating with contemporary Hebrew poets and paytannim. Aubrey is a teacher in demand in many contexts, from federations to rabbinical school seminaries to universities and Jewish meditation retreats. A fuller list of his numerous publications can be viewed at: https://aubreyglazer.academia.edu/
alongourpath@gmail.com
Rabbi Kliel Rose, Winnipeg
Born in Israel into a rabbinic family, Rabbi Kliel grew up in Winnipeg. After an absence of 26 years, he returned to Winnipeg, where he offers regular mediation sessions at his congregation, Congregation Etz Chayim. www.congregationetzchayim.ca/
rabbikliel@etzchayim.ca
Matthew Gindin, Vancouver
Matthew Gindin is the Master Teacher at Or Shalom Synagogue inVancouver, BC. He works as a writer and journalist and has a background in Holistic Medicine. Matthew has been teaching meditation since 2004 and draws on neo-Hasidic, Buddhist and Vedantic traditions.
https://www.matthewgindin.com/
matthewgindin@gmail.com
Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson
Jay Michaelson Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson is a journalist, meditation teacher, and rabbi. He is an editor and teacher for the Ten Percent Happier meditation app, a columnist at the Daily Beast, and the author of eight books on spirituality and social justice. In previous lives, Jay was a Jewish LGBTQ activist for ten years, founding two queer Jewish organizations, Nehirim and Eshel. He has been listed on the ‘Forward 50’ list of the most influential American Jews, and has been a Jewish educator, in one form or another, for 25 years.
Carina Raisman, Montreal
Carina is the founder and visionary of Resource Yoga, www.resourceyoga.com. She has been practicing yoga for over twenty years and she has been teaching for ten years. She is certified by Yoga Alliance. As a yoga therapist, Carina aims to integrate yoga into the public health system, making yoga accessible to all.