Ways of Awe

Show Notes

Ways of Awe was written by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, based on translations originally shared with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, WA on unceded Coast Salish, Duwamish land. All episodes edited by Maia Brown. Audio engineering by Daniel Guenther. Thank you to Ross Kirshenbaum, or Levoneh for composing our show music and to Peter  Lippman, and Jimmy Austin for playing on the track, and to Jenny Asarnow for their field recordings. Thank you to the Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Support Program, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture Smart Ventures Program, and Signal Fire Coop. Thank you to Hannah Epstein for designing our promotional images. Thank you to everyone who attended our live show!

Please help us make Ways of Awe Season Two possible: https://givebutter.com/waysofawe

Thank you to our guests for this episode, and the sources that inspired their offerings:

Shelby Handler is a writer and organizer living in Seattle on Dxʷdəwʔabš (Duwamish) land. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, Redivider, Poetry Northwest, Black Warrior Review Online, The Journal, Southern Indiana Review, among others. Shelby received their MFA in poetry at the University of Washington-Seattle and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Shelby has received support from Seattle Public Library, Tin House, the Richard Hugo House, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Mineral School, the Seventh Wave, Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, Jack Straw Cultural Center, Gay City Arts, Asylum Arts, and the Yiddish Book Center. Shelby is on staff at Jewish Voice for Peace. Follow them @shelbeleh and shelbyhandler.com.

Anna Goren is a writer and Ima living in Seattle, WA on the unceded lands of the Duwamish and Coast Salish peoples. When she's not working with nonprofits to tell stories that build support for their missions, she's singing nigguns and harmonies, growing and eating food, and volunteering with the Jewish Coalition for Immigrant Justice.

Tzali Loren is a banjo player and Talmud lover. She is a graduate of SVARA's Teaching Kollel, and the creator of Talmidei Talmideihon, Seattle's own queer Talmud beit midrash.

Stefanie Fox is a poet and the Executive Director of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Jenny Asarnow is a queer Jewish audio producer and parent who works with communities to tell their stories through journalism, documentary, audio art, and site-specific projects. They founded KUOW’s RadioActive Youth Media and have held leadership roles at KBCS, Hollow Earth Radio, The Seattle Globalist, and the Third Coast International Audio Festival.

• About Saltwater Soundwalk: Saltwater Soundwalk is a sound walk and audio collage about our relationships and responsibilities towards the Salish Sea and connecting waters, centering Indigenous Coast Salish voices and language. Created by audio artists Jenny Asarnow and Rachel Lam (Anigiduwagi enrolled Cherokee Nation), this audio experience is intended to be listened to on site at Gasworks Park in Seattle, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Commissioned with SPU 1% for Art Funds. Administered by the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture. City of Seattle, Bruce Harrell, Mayor.

Devin E. Naar is an associate professor of history and Jewish studies and chair of the Sephardic studies program at the University of Washington. His first book, Jewish Salonica: Between the Ottoman Empire and Modern Greece, won several awards; he is at work on a new book about Sephardic Jews in the United States. He also serves on the advisory board of Jewish Currents. 

• For the translations of the original documents on accusations that Rabbi Israel Najara engaged in same-sex sex, the apparent ubiquity of same-sex sex at yeshivas in Salonica, and Rabbi Pallache's rabbinical decision regarding trans identity, see Noam Sienna, A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts.
• On the melding of Hebrew liturgy and Ottoman musical styles, see Maureen Jackson, Mixing Musics: Turkish Jewry and the Urban Landscape of Sacred Song and listen to Ottoman Hebrew Sacred Songs(featuring Seattle Hazzan Samuel Benaroya, z'l).
• On Jewish attitudes in the Ottoman Empire to Zionism, including in Ottoman Palestine, see Michele Campos, Ottoman Brothers: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Early Twentieth Century Palestine; Bashir Bashir and Leila Farsakh, eds., The Arab and Jewish Questions: Geographies of Entanglement in Palestine and Beyond; and Hillel Cohen, Enemies, a Love Story: Mizrahi-Arab-Ashkenazi Relations Since the Dawn of Zionism.
• On Leftist politics in Ladino, see Devin E. Naar, "Reclaiming the Ladino Left" and translations and recordings of Ladino socialist anthems from the Lower East Side. 
• Finally, please note that the style used by Devin Naar to chant the Kaddish on this podcast was typically used in the Salonican custom for the Kaddish Shalem rather than the Kaddish Yatom, even though the words are the same for both. You can listen to some of his Uncle Bob's recordings here.

Rachel Edelman is a poet and teacher based in Seattle. Their debut collection of poems, Dear Memphis, explores their Jewish family's displacement and belonging over five generations in Memphis, Tennessee. The English version of "Enough with the Past, Let Me Deal with the Dead" was published in Dear Memphis (River River Books, 2024). It first appeared in Narrative Magazine.

Maia Brown is a Yiddish musician and dance-leader, writer, translator, visual artist and educator. Brown has a background in oral history and fine art at Oberlin College, including a Watson Fellowship to study storytelling and advocacy in South Africa and the North of Ireland. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College. She is the founder of anti-fascist Yiddish folk-punk duo, Brivele. You can find more of their work at Der Tkhines Proyect, Open Siddur Project, Town Hall Seattle, Humanities Washington, and e-flux Architecture. Learn more at maia-brown.com

• The episode ends with Maia teaching a tkhine she created for tashlikh as a part of Der Tkhines Proyekt. The text, attributions and another recording of the tkhine can be found on soundcloud & The Open Siddur Project. 

• "tkhine far tashlikh," Melody and adaptation by Maia Brown. Excerpted and adapted from “seder tashlikh” published in a 1835 tkhine anthology by Yehoshua Heshil Miro: בית יעקב Allgemeines Gebetbuch für gebildete Frauen mosaischer Religion. 

Thank you to our musicians whose brilliance stitched together entire evening and this episode:

Peter Lippman founded the first klezmer band in Seattle, back in 1980. He now plays with Suki's KlezJam. He's been active in human rights and anti-war work since well before that time. Peter loves justice more than anything else. 

Jimmy Austin inherited both his first name and his first trombone from his paternal grandfather. He brings a distinctively intense, expressive, and collaborative style to a wide variety of projects around the Pacific Northwest and is particularly active in the local Yiddish music scene, organizing community music and dance programming.

Laurie Andres is an accomplished piano and piano accordionist for many classical and folk idioms. His specialities include fiddle tunes of New England, English Country Danse, and Klezmer music. Laurie has played for dance and music festivals, concerts, and community dances in the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Tell us what you think!

Connect with Ways of Awe: 

https://www.instagram.com/waysofawe/
https://signalfirecoop.org/ways-of-awe/
[email protected]

This episode of Ways of Awe features the Mourner’s Kaddish, a prayer that’s recited year-round, but has a particular charge during the Days of Awe. 

Show Notes

Ways of Awe was written by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, based on translations originally shared with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, WA on unceded Coast Salish, Duwamish land. All episodes edited by Maia Brown. Audio engineering by Daniel Guenther. Thank you to Ross Kirshenbaum, or Levoneh, and Peter Lippman, and Jimmy Austin for our show music, and to Jenny Asarnow for their field recordings. Thank you to the Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Support Program, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture Smart Ventures Program, and Signal Fire Coop. Thank you to Hannah Epstein for designing our promotional images. Thank you to the members of our community who lent their prayer-voices to this episode: Rachel Edelman, Tzali Loren, Moishe-Volf Dolman, Avreml Gross-Grand, Colin Coltrera, Zimyl Adler, and many more. Thank you to Noam Lerman for sharing their setting of a tkhine for yizkor, “Yizkor Di Neshomes”. 

Thank you to our guests for this episode:

Mónica Gomery is a rabbi and writer. She currently serves on the clergy team of Kol Tzedek Synagogue in West Philadelphia, and taught on the faculty of SVARA from 2015-2024. Mónica is a co-founder of Let My People Sing! and the author of three books of poetry. She is passionate about supporting people who have been denied access to, disconnected from, and marginalized by ancient traditions to gain access to these traditions as a resource for empowerment and transformation in their lives, so that they can become vessels for healing and justice in the world.

Laynie Soloman is a passionate teacher and Torah-lover who seeks to uplift the piously irreverent, queer, and subversive spirit of Jewish text and theology. They serve as the Associate Rosh Yeshiva at SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, and co-founded the Trans Halakha Project, an initiative that seeks to create new forms of halakhic (Jewish legal) expression shaped by trans and non-binary Jews. Laynie has taught Jewish text and practice in a wide range of spaces, including Yeshivat Hadar, the Academy for Jewish Religion, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. They believe that grounding in, learning, and expressing ourselves through Torah is a liberatory spiritual practice and source of cultural resistance that can help us live with greater integrity, rootedness, and joy. You can find their work at layniesolomxn.com.

noam lerman is a story-collector, shabes and nature-lover, musician, grief worker, Yiddishist, soyfer(scribe) and amulet maker, and zogerke/rabbi. They work with Der Tkhines Proyekt, which provides experimental and songful workshops that give life to Yiddish tkhines (spontaneous supplications) that were/are created by women, trans, and gender-marginalized folk. Learn more about tkhines at spontaneousprayer.com.

noa is a learner, teacher, ritual leader, scribe-in-training, and community facilitator. queer and of mixed jewish lineages, n organizes as part of a Maghrebi-forward Ashkifardi kehilla on Kanien’kehá:ka lands. n learns and teaches Torah and tefila, does community medicking and disability justice and harm reduction with young people, plays with kids, and works with others who are building towards freedom for all. 

Some sources that informed this episode: 

• Kaddish by Leon Wieseltier
• Development and History of the Kaddish by Anita Diamant
• A Brief of History of Kaddish by Rabbi Gil Student
• How pandemics in Jewish history shaped mourners' Kaddish by Levi Cooper
• Finding My Way to the Mourner’s Kaddish by Richard Chess
• Jewish Virtual Library on the Mourner’s Kaddish
• A Study of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Liturgy by Rabbi Hayyim Angel

Tell us what you think!

Connect with Ways of Awe: 

https://www.instagram.com/waysofawe/
https://signalfirecoop.org/ways-of-awe/
[email protected]

This episode of Ways of Awe features the Al Cheyt prayer, one of the central atonement prayers of Yom Kippur–a primary part of the Vidui, or Confession. 

Show Notes

Ways of Awe was written by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, based on translations originally shared with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, WA on unceded Coast Salish, Duwamish land. All episodes edited by Maia Brown. Audio engineering by Daniel Guenther. Thank you to Ross Kirshenbaum, or Levoneh, and Peter Lippman, and Jimmy Austin for our show music, and to Jenny Asarnow for their field recordings. Thank you to the Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Support Program, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture Smart Ventures Program, and Signal Fire Coop. Thank you to the members of our community who lent their prayer-voices to this episode: Tzali Loren. Thank you to Hannah Epstein for designing our promotional images.

Thank you to our guests for this episode:

Binya Kóatz is a sefardi / ashki / moroccan / argentinean / ukranian / french trans jewish torah-lover, who teaches, sings, organizes jewish community. She is originally from Queens, and resides on Ohlone Land in the East Bay. Person/comedian: @binya_donethat. Drag: @auntie.semitism. Band: @krekhts. Organizing: @jswana.bay. Yeshiva: @shelmaalayeshiva

Some sources that informed this episode: 

• About Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimondes) 
• About the SVARA Yeshiva Learning Method and the Crash Talk
• Kabbalistic Sources about Tzimtzum (the idea of G-d’s constriction during creation)

Tell us what you think!

Connect with Ways of Awe: 

https://www.instagram.com/waysofawe/
https://signalfirecoop.org/ways-of-awe/
[email protected]

This episode of Ways of Awe features the Kol Nidre (“All Vows”), the prayer that opens Yom Kippur as the sun sets.

Show Notes

Ways of Awe was written by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, based on translations originally shared with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, WA on unceded Coast Salish, Duwamish land. All episodes edited by Maia Brown. Audio engineering by Daniel Guenther. Thank you to Ross Kirshenbaum, or Levoneh, and Peter Lippman, and Jimmy Austin for our show music, and to Jenny Asarnow for their field recordings. Thank you to the Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Support Program and the King County Office of Arts & Culture, Smart Ventures Program, and Signal Fire Coop. Thank you to Hannah Epstein for designing our promotional images.

Thank you to those who lent their prayer-voices to this episode: Noraa Kaplan, Sharone Sayegh, Moyshe Oysher. Thank you to Jeannie Wells-Yablonsky from the Seattle Symphony for sharing her rendition of Kol Nidre. Excerpt from ‘Kol Nidre,’ performed by Sharone Sayegh in the Iraqi Sephardic tradition. Produced by Reboot in partnership with Hillel International for Higher Holidays 2020. Used by permission.

Thank you to our guests for this episode:

Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg is a writer, educator and organizer and calendar-maker based on Dakota land in Minneapolis. She became a rabbi in order to learn diverse and nuanced histories, tell stories, and create spaces, ritual, and organizing that helps transform our relationships to past, present and future. She is co-author, alongside Rabbi Ariana Katz, of For Times Such As These: A Radical’s Guide to the Jewish Year, authored an Introduction to Trauma, Healing and Resilience for Rabbis, Jewish Educators and Organizers. She is a founding collective member of  Signal Fire Radical Jewish Artist Cooperative, and a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council.

Rabbi Xava De Cordova is a disabled, Sefradi, Mizraxi trans woman and co-host of the world's first Queer Talmud podcast, "Xai, how are you?". She is a long-time SVARA-style Talmud learner and SVARA teaching kollel fellow who got her start as a teacher by creating Beit Midrash Behind Bars, an organization that facilitated Jewish learning opportunities for incarcerated people in Washington State. She is also the co-Rosh Yeshiva of Shel Maala, which she co-founded with her incredible co-Rosh, Binya. She lives in Providence, RI, where she regularly produces Jewish ritual theatre (or did, before the pandemic) and does her best to steward the radical tradition she's been blessed to inherit.

Some sources that informed this episode: 

• Jewish Emptiness: Kavannot for Kol Nidrei by Rabbi Xava De Cordova
• The Case Against Kol Nidre by Adam Soclof
• Kol Nidre: Past, Present, and Future by Richard-Steiner
• Kol Nidre entry in the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia 
• A Brief History of the Kol Nidrei Prayer by Cantor Deborrah Cannizzaro
• Exploring Kol Nidre by David Schwartz
• The Geonim by Eli Barnavi
• Kol Nidre Wikipedia Entry
• This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared by Rabbi Alan Lew

Tell us what you think!

Connect with Ways of Awe: 

https://www.instagram.com/waysofawe/
https://signalfirecoop.org/ways-of-awe/
[email protected]

This episode of Ways of Awe introduces the project through an informal conversation with its creators, Maia Brown and Shelby Handler. 

Show Notes

Ways of Awe was written by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, based on translations originally shared with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, WA on unceded Coast Salish, Duwamish land. All episodes edited by Maia Brown. Audio engineering by Daniel Guenther. Thank you to Ross Kirshenbaum, or Levoneh, and Peter Lippman, and Jimmy Austin for our show music, and to Jenny Asarnow for their field recordings. Thank you to the Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Support Program, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture Smart Ventures Program, and Signal Fire Coop. Thank you to the members of our community who lent their collective  prayer-voices to this episode. Thank you to Hannah Epstein for designing our promotional images.

To learn more about the communities that inspired this project: 

• SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva
• Kadima Reconstructionist Community 

Tell us what you think!

Connect with Ways of Awe: 

https://www.instagram.com/waysofawe/
https://signalfirecoop.org/ways-of-awe/
[email protected]