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Jewish marriage rites are robust. Now a rabbi is innovating rituals for Jews who divorce.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — For Lyssa Jaye, throwing the wood chips into the Tuolumne River felt in many ways familiar to the tashlich ritual performed on Rosh Hashanah. But rather than casting off her sins, she was tossing away feelings: shame, resentment, anger.
They were the emotions that had taken residence inside Jaye since her divorce eight years ago, along with a sense of failure. And she had come to a Jewish retreat to rid herself of them.
“I’ve been carrying around these feelings for years now,” Jaye said. “I have a completely different life now, and I needed to let them go.”
Jaye was taking part in Divorce & Discovery: A Jewish Healing Retreat, the first-ever gathering in a series conceived by Rabbi Deborah Newbrun as part of her training, held this month at Camp Tawonga in the Bay Area.
One of the requirements at the Pluralistic Rabbinical Seminary, where Newbrun was ordained last year in the first graduating class, “was that each of us had to do an innovation, or something that didn’t exist before,” she said.
Newbrun, who directed Camp Tawonga for more than two decades, has been recognized for innovative programming for such achievements as initiating Tawonga’s LGBT family camp and founding its wilderness department. She even won a prestigious 2018 Covenant Award for Jewish educators. But as she started thinking about how to fulfill the seminary requirement, her first thought was, “I don’t have any ideas left in me.”
Then she began reflecting back on her divorce years earlier. She remembered how she had approached numerous rabbis and colleagues in search of Jewish support around the grief she felt. And how they all came up empty-handed.
That’s when she realized: “I can put together something meaningful and helpful for people going through divorce.”
From the moment participants arrived at Camp Tawonga near Yosemite, they knew this would be no ordinary Jewish retreat. At the opening event, all of the facilitators, several clergy members and a therapist shared their own divorce stories, “to set the standard and normalize vulnerability, transparent sharing and establish that we all know what it’s like to have a marriage end,” Newbrun said.
Most participants were from the Bay Area, with a handful from farther afield. They were in different life stages, from those in their 30s dealing with custody battles over young children, to empty nesters in their 60s. Some had separated from their partners years ago, while others had gone their separate ways more recently. Some split amicably; a good many did not. But all had come up against a lack of Jewish resources or support when navigating this major life passage.
Rabbi Deborah Newbrun, the founder of Divorce and Discovery at the recent weekend. (Photo/Margot Yecies)
Jaye said she left no stone unturned in seeking out support, an experience Newbrun said she heard echoed by many participants. Jaye attended a retreat at a local meditation center. She read self-help books. She joined a support group for divorcees. She went to therapy.
And while they all helped in different ways, none was specifically Jewish.
“I knew I needed some kind of spiritual way forward,” she said. “I needed to do this in my own language, with my own people.”
Even though the retreat came nearly a decade years after Jaye’s divorce, “it was profound. It felt like coming home, and that this is what I needed all along. This model could be extremely powerful. The rituals we did could be taught in rabbinical schools or to Jewish educators so it’s not just ‘sign this get and goodbye,’” she said, referring to the Jewish divorce document.
Rather than create new rituals, Newbrun and her facilitators took familiar Jewish rituals and retooled them.
The tashlich ritual, led by Newbrun and Maggid Jhos Singer, had a call-and-response portion, and participants also could call out what they personally wanted to cast off. “One person ‘tashliched’ their wedding ring into the river and felt it was such a perfect place to let it go!” said Newbrun.
An optional immersion in the Tuolumne River followed. Jaye, who years ago went to the mikvah alone, with only the attendant there for support, said there was no comparison with how much more healing it felt performing the ritual in community.
A session on sitting shiva for one’s marriage, led by Rabbi Sue Reinhold, allowed participants to share and mourn the loss of what they missed most about being married. That resonated for Robyn Lieberman, who does not attend synagogue services but went to every session at the retreat on innovating Jewish rituals.
“I did need to mourn what I’m losing,” said Lieberman, who had been married to an Israeli. “We had a very public, open house around Jewish religion, and a constant Israeli identity, which fulfilled my Jewish needs.”
Rabbi Jennie Chabon of Congregation B’nai Tikvah in Walnut Creek reflected on how much time she has spent with couples preparing for their wedding day, both in premarital counseling and in planning the event, and on how many marriage-related topics are covered in rabbinical school.
“And when it comes to divorce? Nothing,” Chabon said. “We’re all out here on our own trying to figure out how to wander through it.”
She was tasked with creating a havdalah ceremony with a divorce theme, in which she reimagined the wine, spices and flame typically used to mark a division between Shabbat and the rest of the week.
“There’s a fire that burns within each of us, and that flame doesn’t go out,” said Chabon, 47. “When you’re married for a long time, your identity, energy and spirit is so woven into that of another.” Her ritual was meant to affirm that “you are on fire just as you are, and you’re a blessing as an individual in the world. You don’t need a partnership or family to be whole.”
Even the Shabbat Torah service was on theme.
Rabbi Jennie Chabon reads from the Torah during a service at the Divorce and Discovery retreat. (Photo/Margot Yecies)
Rather than focusing on Noah’s emergence from the ark after the flood, Chabon spoke about a lesser-known section of the week’s Torah portion, in which Noah builds a fire and offers a sacrifice to God. But if the entire earth was drenched from the flood, Chabon asked, what did he burn?
“The answer is he must have burned the ark,” Chabon said in recalling her talk at the retreat. “What does that mean for people going through this incredibly painful and tender time in their lives, when what was once a safe container and secure and protected them, they have to burn it down in order to start life anew?
“This is a perfect rebirth metaphor. But what’s being birthed is a new self and a new identity in the world as a single person,” Chabon said. “You have to release and let go of what was to make room for the blessing for who you’re going to become.”
At a ritual “hackathon” workshop presented by Newbrun, participants suggested standing during Kaddish at synagogue to mourn their marriages, and offering their children a Friday night blessing that they are whole whether they are at either parent’s home.
Not all of the sessions centered on Jewish ritual. In a session on the Japanese art of kintsugi, or mending broken pottery, attendees made vessels whose cracks they fixed with putty, symbolizing that beauty can be found in imperfection. Many danced in a Saturday-night silent disco.
Everyone was assigned to a small group, or havurah, that they met with daily, so they could establish deeper connections within the larger cohort.
“To have gone through some of these practices was very meaningful to me,” said Lieberman. “It’s not like I put a seal on my marriage and wrapped it up in a bow and put it behind me, but it was a nice catharsis for completing a transition that I’ve been very thoughtful about.”
Newbrun aims to recreate the retreat in communities around the country. Both Jaye and Lieberman said they found value in being in community with people “who get it,” without the judgment they often face.
“I was a little skeptical that all I’d have in common with people was that we were Jewish and divorced, and that that wouldn’t be enough for me to form a relationship,” said Lieberman. “But having the willingness to talk about it and explore it did open up a lot of very vulnerable conversations. The expert facilitation really made us think about the fact that divorce is not about your paper [certificate], it’s about reexamining the direction of your life and who you want to be.”
A version of this piece originally ran in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
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Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention
(JTA) — Local and national Jewish Democrats say they are sympathetic after Michigan’s Jewish attorney general, Dana Nessel, said she would skip the state Democratic Party’s nominating convention over concerns about antisemitism and harassment.
“I don’t blame AG Nessel for not wanting to go and basically put herself in situations that feel untenable in this moment of time and don’t add any value politically, personally,” Jessica “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Friday.
Alexander’s comment came a day after Nessel announced during a televised antisemitism roundtable that she would be skipping the convention next month, where party leaders will finalize the state’s Democratic candidate for Senate following a divisive primary that has focused in part on Israel and antisemitism.
“I don’t feel safe going. I feel like my presence isn’t going to be welcome. I don’t want to get chased around. I don’t want to get harassed. I don’t want to get yelled and screamed at. I don’t want to get booed off the stage, irrespective of what I’m saying,” Nessel said during the roundtable. “And I believe that if I go, that is what will happen because it’s been happening to me.”
She said she had filed a formal complaint within the party about a party official who had called her a neo-Nazi because of her beliefs. “Why is this person more accepted in our party than me?” she asked without naming the official. Her office responded to a request for comment by referring to the recorded livestream of the antisemitism roundtable.
Nessel’s declaration comes in the final days of the primary between Rep. Haley Stevens, a pro-Israel stalwart, and Abdul El-Sayed, a democratic socialist who is deeply critical of Israel. El-Sayed is surging in polls despite a reported $30 million spent against him by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, and its supporters, whom he has made a target of criticism from the campaign trail.
Nessel’s comments also follow turmoil at the Michigan Democratic Party’s endorsement convention in April, where Stevens was booed by attendees. A third primary candidate who later dropped out of the race, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, said a convention attendee had targeted her Jewish husband with an antisemitic slur.
The incident has fueled alarm among Jewish Democrats, according to Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
“She’s not alone,” Soifer told JTA about Nessel on Friday. “We’ve heard from other Jewish Democrats who attended the Democratic Party convention earlier this year in Michigan, and there was a sense of discomfort amid what felt like a pro-Palestinian protest [that] may have even blurred the line for some into antisemitic sentiment — and it’s really concerning.”
Nessel has raised the alarm about antisemitism within the party for years, alleging in 2024 that Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a prominent pro-Palestinian voice, had been antisemitic when criticizing charges Nessel filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan.
For her part, Alexander said she would be participating in the nominating convention and said she believed the chair of the state Democratic Party, Curtis Hertel, had been “very accessible and very open to making sure that we, including our Jewish elected officials, feel safe in that space.” But she said she understood why Nessel was staying away.
“It would never even occur to me, but I’m not an elected official,” Alexander said. “It’s a different stake for me than it is for Dana. I understand her completely.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish Democrats back Michigan AG Dana Nessel’s decision to skip state party convention appeared first on The Forward.
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Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’
(JTA) — Every congregational rabbi in Maine has signed onto a statement calling for peace and urging the state’s political leaders to stop using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza, following a Democratic primary in which several candidates used the label for the first time.
But the rabbis also indicated that they, too, were unsatisfied with conditions in the Middle East and called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to work toward a peaceful future.
“We call upon Maine’s leaders, and particularly its political leaders, to reject the irresponsible usage of the term in describing the Israel-Hamas War,” said the statement released on Friday. “We also call upon Israeli and Palestinian leaders to end the cycle of violence and to create a better world for both Palestinian and Israeli children.”
The statement, titled “A Call for Peace and Responsible Rhetoric,” argues that using the term as a “political slogan does not advance peace in the Middle East.” The term “erases essential moral and legal distinctions, diminishes the meaning of genocide, and inflames hatred for the local Jewish community,” the rabbis say.
“Compassion for Palestinians does not require the adoption of hateful and misleading language,” they continue. “Advocating for peace does not require participation in a ‘Holocaust inversion’ against the Jewish community. And political leadership does not require demonizing one community in the service of another.”
The statement comes days after Troy Jackson, a former logger and state Senate president, secured the Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nomination Saturday at the party’s nominating convention to replace Graham Platner, a staunch Israel critic who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Platner faced a sexual assault allegation, which he denies. Jackson now faces Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November’s general election.
Platner’s romp to the primary victory featured routine use of “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions. And ahead of the convention to replace him, Jackson and several other Democratic hopefuls who later exited the race began using the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s war in Gaza for the first time, a shift that drew scrutiny from some Jewish leaders and voters in the state.
The use of the term has become a “currency for acquiring power and position in Maine’s Democratic party,” Rabbi Rachel Isaacs, the leader of Beth Israel Congregation in Waterville, who also signed the statement, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“Too many Maine Democrats are cynically willing to trade in that currency at the expense of our safety and dignity,” she said in an emailed statement. “We decided we needed to say something collectively, both about the specious and dangerous nature of the claim, and about how much damage has been done to our families and congregants.”
The statement Friday was spearheaded by the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine and signed by every congregational rabbi in the state, including Rabbi Bill Siemers of the Conservative Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor and Rabbi Erica Asch of the Reform Temple Beth El in Augusta. (Rabbis affiliated with the Chabad movement in Maine did not appear on the signatory list.)
Zach Schwartz, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council at the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, said the federation hoped the “unity displayed here in Maine can inspire Jewish communities across the US to also unite against the extremist rhetoric harming our community and our children.”
Rabbi Josh Stanton, the associate vice president of interfaith and intergroup initiatives for Jewish Federations of North America, also hailed the joint statement.
“Maine’s Jewish clergy are setting an important example with their call to put aside inflammatory rhetoric and look to the common good,” Stanton said in an emailed statement. “At a time of rising polarization and declining civil discourse, the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine’s efforts to unify the community around this important message are a mark of true leadership.”
Isaacs told JTA that she hoped Jackson would “support, understand, and advocate for all of Maine’s citizens, including the totality of Maine’s diverse Jewish community.”
“Work with us to figure out how to express outrage and legitimate critique of Israel’s government without succumbing to language that you might not know is an ancient antisemitic trope, or dismissing the security needs of Israel’s citizens,” Isaacs said of her message to Jackson. “Please have the courage to forge your own path, and not follow in the footsteps of Graham Platner, a man who should have never been normalized, endorsed, or empowered.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Maine rabbis call for peace, urge politicians to stop calling Gaza war a ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Boy George cedes role of King Herod in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ production after releasing pro-Israel song
(JTA) — Boy George has withdrawn from his run as King Herod in London’s West End revival of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” days before he was due to take the stage and 24 hours after releasing “We Will Dance Again,” dedicated to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on the Nova music festival in Israel.
The 80’s pop star was scheduled to appear at London’s Palladium starting Monday as part of the production’s rotating cast playing King Herod, the Judean king who is best known by Jews for his expansion of the Second Temple and to Christians for his efforts to stave off the arrival of a challenger — the story of which is reflected in the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
Boy George will be replaced by actor Richard Armitage in the London production.
In announcing the cast change, Paul Kelmsley, the singer’s manager, did not directly mention the blowback the former Culture Club frontman was receiving for releasing a pro-Israel song but alluded to it.
“George has never been afraid to stand by his personal convictions, and I have always respected him for that,” he said. ”In this instance, I felt it was right to step aside, allowing the production to remain the focus, while ensuring everyone involved can move forward with mutual respect and goodwill.”
Boy George is defending his decision to release the song, saying he believes artists should be free to express their views even when they are unpopular. In “We Will Dance Again,” the singer rejects claims of genocide against Israel and proclaims, “If you’re ever confused, I stand with the Jews.”
Earlier Friday, Boy George lashed back at the vitriol he was getting online. “What is most shocking is the amount of gay folk attacking me, ” he posted on X. “If you support terrorism you can in the words of Divine ‘Take your toolkit and go f—_ a garage,’” he said, referring to a quote attributed to the taboo-breaking transgender artist.
“When I say ‘they want to kill every last one of us’ I am also talking about us queers, not just the Jewish community,” Boy George said. “When will you wake up?”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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