DAYENU (A hymn to Storahtelling)
Storah On The Road
Storah On The Road
This just in: Judy Schiller, one of the Jewish educators who attended last weekend's STORAHLAB educators training composed this amazing lil poem:
Thanks Judy!
If you had given us the opportunity to connect with old and new friends, without giving us a transporting ritualab with glorious music, Dayenu
If you had given us a transporting ritualab with glorious music, without
an awesome storah-service, Dayenu
If you had given us an awesome storah-service without hearing all about
the state of the Storah, dayenu
If you had given us the state of the Storah, without enriching Shabbat afternoon workshops, Dayenu
If you had given us enriching Shabbat afternoon workshops without a lovely dinner together Saturday evening, dayenu (and thank you for so generously picking up the tab)
If you had given us a lovely dinner together Saturday evening, without one karaoke song, dayenu
If you had given us one karaoke song without a glass of wine dayenu,
If you had given us a glass of wine without 10 karaoke songs, dayenu
If you had given us 10 karaoke songs without Bust a Move, dayenu
If you had given us Bust a Move without teaching us great new warm-ups, dayenu
If you given us great new warm-ups, without collegial study and sharing, dayenu
If you had given us the opportunity for collegial study and sharing, without deep focus review of cool tool, dayenu
But you gave us all of this and more!
Thanks so much for giving us a great weekend at the Storahlab reunion. I feel nurtured and nourished in body, mind and spirit. Many thanks to everyone- the teachers, musicians, the storah staff- who made it such a great experience.
High fives, group hug
Judy
Posts
Judy,
ReplyDeleteAmazing words -THANK YOU. It’s challenging to capture the fullness of the weekend – and probably exhausting to read, so we the words of one of our Storahlab Participants – Judy Schiller, the director of Cleveland’s Jewish Retreat Institute has,indeed helped portray the scope and magnitude of the weekend.
For those of you who wish for a play-by-play, read below! A Storah-Presidential Weekend –
Presidents’ Day Weekend was chock full of training and ritual from Friday straight through until Monday. We kicked off the weekend with an all day Storah-Company Maven training – keeping our Maven-skills fresh, learning new techniques for interpretation and translation of Torah. Many thanks to Rabbi Larry Sebert and his staff at Town and Village Synagogue for hosting us.
We moved into Shabbat with a full-blown Storah-Company Shabbat dinner hosted by Stephanie Pacheco where we ritually hand-washed more people than we could count! Saturday morning, Amichai and Shira Kline along with musicians Jeremy Brown, Akiva the Believer and Naomi Less, led us in a Ritualab – our version of the Shabbat Morning Service. Along with company and community members, nearly 20 participants of the Storahlab Educators Training Program joined us to learn, pray, meditate, laugh and eat – enjoying a full Shabbat experience at the 14th Street Y. Many thanks to Stephen Hazan Arnoff, Hank Widrow and the staff at the 14th Street Y for their hospitality. After an official “State of the Storah” by founder and Executive Artistic Director, Amichai Lau Lavie, and an afternoon of theater and Jewish text learning workshops led by company members Akiva The Believer, Deanna Neil and Elana Bell, we closed Shabbat with a moving Havdallah ritual that allowed us to explore the differentiation of our personal and public selves led creatively by company members Chloe Ramras, David Wolkin and Naomi Less. After a night of karaoking hosted by Company Member Jonathan Goldberg, Storahlabbers engaged in a day and a half of follow-up training with Storahtelling’s Director of Education and Training, Naomi Less.