Welcome to our first SPARK! A more free-wheeling, connective conversation between our hosts that we hope sparks something new in you. In this SPARK, Eliana, Ellen & Josh explore re-returning, joyful prayer at Yom Kippur, and the courage to bring g?dly acts into the world.  Plus, we listen to some of our favorite songs for the season! 

What is the still small voice contained in the shofar blast saying to your heart this year?

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And check out this week’s show notes and transcript @ lightlab.co/podcast/episode-49-spark-high-holidays 

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This week, Eliana, Ellen, & Josh explore the end of the Amidah journey. Topics include the Amidah as a personal AND communal experience, symbolism in the shape words take in our mouths, and license to create our own prayers. Plus, Josh and Coleen Dieker perform Elohai N'tzor live! 

Do written prayers inhibit your extemporaneous prayer experience?

Check out this week’s show notes and transcript @ lightlab.co/podcast/episode-48-elohai-nitzor 

And check out the Light Lab Podcast Elohai N’tzor Spotify Playlist!

We’d love to do a live episode with your community- contact us at [email protected] to learn more.

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This week, we are elated to bring you our interview with Billy Jonas. For over thirty years, Billy Jonas - performer, singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, educator, and playful pray-er extraordinaire - has perfected the art of the neo-tribal hootenanny with audiences around the globe. Using voice, guitar, and industrial re-percussion, each of his concerts is a soul-spelunking, heart-healing, joy-filled journey. We explore using curtains as an invitation to prayer, how to engage the very narrow bridge between the left and right brain in prayer, and when we first considered the benediction of a bird’s song and the rustling of leaves as prayer.

Were you also absent at Hebrew School the day they taught the similarities between Judaism and other ancient earth-based matrixes?

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This week, we are elated to bring you our interview with Rabbi Sarit Horwitz. Rabbi Sarit serves as clergy at Beth Shalom Synagogue in Memphis, TN. We explore creating opportunities for deep experiences in our communities, vulnerability in being a leader and pray-er, and that T’fillah is not meant to be a spectator sport. 

Did you learn your prayers before you learned how to pray?

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This week, Eliana, Ellen, & Josh explore the afternoon and evening peace prayer, Shalom Rav, with our very special guest, Cantor Jeff Klepper! Topics include Burt’s bees, the 1960s, and Jeff’s Jewish journey. Plus we get to listen in to the composing of the classic melody for Shalom Rav. What a treat! 

Where are you feeling abundance in your life?

Check out this week’s show notes @ lightlab.co, including our Shalom Rav spotify playlist!

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This week we’re grateful to bring you Ellen and Eliana’s conversation with Rabbi Toba Spitzer, author of the book “God is Here: Reimagining the Divine.” Rabbi Spitzer takes us on a journey that includes Jewish liberation theology, playing dead (as in the grateful dead), liturgical gymnastics, and the three kinds of metaphors. Rabbi Spitzer’s work has been hugely influential to our thinking around g?d-language and we were geeking out the whole time. We hope you enjoy our interview (and hope you buy her book!)

How can g?d-metaphors influence and enhance our experiences of the Divine?

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This week, Eliana & Ellen are joined by very special guest Rabbi Noah Diamondstein to explore Sim Shalom! We talk about “Everything, Everywhere, All at Once,” Paul Simon, the Force, and what “Shalom” is anyway. Plus, Noah shares the story behind his own beautiful melody for Sim Shalom and plays it for us live. What a treat! 

How is your “Shalom” today?

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This week, Ellen, Eliana, and Josh explore “v’al kulam” and the threefold blessing, bridging the gratitude and peace sections of the weekday Amidah. Topics include Glinda the good witch, gematria, Siddur differences (it’s a full bingo board!), g?d’s face, and the ancient art of duchenning. 

What is your blessing? 

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This week, we are honored to bring you our interview with organizer, coach, and leader April N. Baskin. April is the founder and CEO of Joyous Justice,  a “multiracial community-powered social justice and spiritual transformation organization that seeds and leads systemic change and healing.” We explore the intersection of justice work and spirituality, her path to becoming a Kohenet, and the work of “coming home.” 

How do you access spiritual sustenance? 

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This week we’re re-airing episode 5 so “Modim Anachnu Lach” can take its rightful place in our Amidah journey! Josh, Ellen, and Eliana nerd out on Jewish-people-monikers, intertext, and gematria (numerology,) plus share our favorite melodies and Thanksgiving traditions. What a great excuse for gratitude!

Check out this week’s show notes on our new website! 

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