Ruach HaYam, in partnership with Congregation Am Tikva, invites you to our seventh annual full day Shabbat retreat for LGBTQ+ Jews and friends and family.
November 16, 2019, from 9:30am to 7:30pm at Congregation Eitz Chayim, 136 Magazine Street, Cambridge, MA 02139.
PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED PLEASE REGISTER HERE
Eitz Chayim is 15 minutes walk from Central Square. There will be a parking consideration in effect so that you may park within a couple blocks of the synagogue. Eitz Chayim has a ramp entry and accessible and all gender bathrooms.
Refresh your spirit and make new friends in this fabulous day of egalitarian davening, creative and thoughtful workshops,and delicious kosher food!
Ruach HaYam welcomes queer Jews, friends, allies, family, and interfaith connections . We worship without a mechitza, with the music of our voices only, and with our own siddur. Our retreats are warm, meaningful, collaborative, lead to deepening of friendships, and are simply fabulous.
Schedule for RetreatSee below for biographies
| Services |
| 9:30 am to Noon. Service Leader Marvin Kabakoff. Darshan Dev Singer |
| Lunch Noon to 1:30 pm |
| Workshops |
| 1:45 to 3:00 – Penina Weinberg Radical Hospitality – Queerly Imperfect – Angles on Angels. We’ll examine the parsha, Vayera, in particular Gen 18 and 19, with a queer eye. We’ll look first at the angels’ visit to Abraham and Sarah, and then their visit to Sodom. What is the sin of Sodom, really? Radical inhospitality. Sounds good. But there is something not quite right. The women don’t do so well, from Sarah, to Lot’s daughters, to his wife. A queer perspective tells us to view the text from multiple angles, or angels, to “turn it and turn it.” So we will. |
| 3:15 to 3:45 – Time for a 7th inning stretch! Walk or exercise! |
| 4:00 to 5:15 – Marvin Kabakoff. Queer Jews of Boston: LGBTQ Rights and Queer Genealogy. A Brief History of the LGBTQ Movement, focusing on queer Jews in Boston, the organizations they created for themselves, and their important role in LGBTQ activism in Massachusetts. Marvin will invite us to explore who our forebears are, and why Jews, queer and not, seem to play an outsize role in progressive movements, in this case the movement for LGBTQ rights. |
| Closing |
| 5:30 – Havdalah |
| Following Havdalah – Meal/Melave Malka |
Workshop and other Leaders
 Penina Weinberg, Retreat Director is an independent biblical scholar and the founder of Ruach HaYam. Penina is President Emerita of Congregation Eitz Chayim in Cambridge, MA, where she is a frequent lay leader. Her studying and teaching focus a queer lens on issues of gender, power, and identity in the Hebrew Bible. Penina teaches in Boston area synagogues, and has led many workshops for Nehirim and Keshet. This is her seventh year as Ruach HaYam retreat director. |
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 Marvin Kabakoff, Service and Workshop Leader, graduated from Brandeis and received a Ph.D. in history from Washington University-St. Louis. He is recently retired as an archivist with the National Archives and Records Administration, and is a board member of the History Project, Boston’s LGBTQ archives. Marvin attended a community Hebrew school and Hebrew High School in New Haven, and has been a long-time service leader at Am Tikva. |
| Our Partner Organization |
 Congregation Am Tikva, since 1976, has been providing a safe and welcoming space for GLBT Jews in the Boston area to pray together and to socialize. It created its own gender-neutral prayerbooks and customs for Friday evening services, the high holidays, and special events, such as the Erev Pride Liberation Seder. Am Tikva is a mixture of genders and sexualities who come from a variety of Jewish backgrounds. The services reflect that variety. Am Tikva offers two Friday evening services a month, one more contemporary and one more traditional, as well as High Holiday services and celebrations of other queer and Jewish holidays |
Image: Abraham and the Three Angels. Marc Chagall