March 12, 2025 GROW Session: Giving Shape and Intentionality to Rituals

description

For our second 2025 program in Hebrew College Adult Learning’s free, monthly GROW series, we examine modern midrashic responses to October 7th with Rav Rachel Adelman, Hebrew College Associate Professor of Bible.

We hope you will spend an hour with us for this and future programs in our series, to gather, reflect, observe, and wrestle with topics that will deepen your Jewish learning.

Giving Shape and Intentionality to Rituals

Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2025 | 12-1 PM EST/9-10 AM PST | Zoom
Program: Giving Shape and Intentionality to Rituals
Instructor: Elisha Gechter
Cost: FREE

Humans are ritual beings – rituals help us mark moments in our life so that they don’t feel as fleeting. Judaism is full of rituals – some of which may speak to us more than others. Rituals help ground us in a world that often feels chaotic. Working with the definition of ritual as an action imbued with meaning and intention – how can we get better at creating rituals that are a good fit in our lives? Come learn with Mayyim Hayyim’s past board president about ways that this institution has been creating attuned Jewish water ceremonies to mark a myriad of moments for people and how you can gain inspiration from them for your own life.

Instructor

Elisha Gechter is the Senior Program Manager for Fellowships Curriculum at Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership. She designs leadership learning experiences for over 100 fellows, oversees the Wexner Israel Fellowship and the Wexner Senior Leadership Program as well as the Black Family Fellowship for active duty and veteran military students.

Elisha has been working in the Boston Jewish Community for 14 years – previously connecting people searching for community and for Jewish wisdom as the Associate Director of Adult Learning and Community Engagement at Hebrew College (where she founded the Eser program in 2011and has been teaching in the young adult and young family community ever since) and fundraising with local young leaders at CJP. She has a BA in psychology from Yeshiva University’s Stern College in New York and an MA/MBA from Brandeis’ Heller Hornstein Program in Jewish Leadership and Non-Profit Management. She serves as president of the board of Mayyim Hayyim Mikvah and Education Center, a co-chair of Encounter’s Boston Regional Circle, and lives in Somerville, MA with her husband and two kids. She attends minyan at Minyan Tehillah, Cambridge Minyan and the Tremont Street Shul.

Save the dates

Spring GROW Sessions

Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2025 | 12-1 PM EST/9-10 AM PST | Zoom
Program: In Miriam’s Footsteps: Jewish Women’s Leadership and the Pursuit of Justice
Instructor: Judith Rosenbaum

Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2025 | 12-1 PM EST/9-10 AM PST | Zoom
Program: TBD
Instructor: Rabbi Adam Lavitt