Sarah Chandler (she/her) aka Kohenet Shamirah is a Brooklyn-based Jewish educator, artist, activist, healer, and poet. She teaches, writes, and consults on issues related to Judaism, earth-based spiritual practice, respectful workplaces, mindfulness, and farming. An ordained Kohenet with the Hebrew Priestess Institute and a trainer for “Taamod: Stand Up!”, she is also an advanced student of Kabbalistic dream work at The School of Images. Previously, Sarah served as the Director of Romemu Yeshiva, Chief Compassion Officer of Jewish Initiative for Animals, and Director of Earth Based Spiritual Practices at Adamah’s Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. Currently, she is the CEO of Shamir Collective, as a coach and consultant to high-profile and emergent artists and authors.

Aya is a scholar, wilderness guide, and ritualist pursuing rabbinic ordination at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College after recently completing her M.A. in Jewish Studies from the Graduate Theological Union. Her studies build on six years of leadership at Wilderness Torah, an organization committed to reconnecting Judaism to its natural cycles. Here she established herself as a pioneer in earth-based Jewish practice by developing outdoor rites of passage experiences for B’nai Mitzvah age youth and training local and international teams of educators. Aya has served several additional JOFEE organizations, most recently Hazon as a JOFEE fellowship mentor. Aya is happiest when jumping in a lake, writing poetry, or spending the day giggling with her 3-year-old niece.

Sarah is working on the narratives section of our Yizal Mayim curriculum. Sarah is a 4th year rabbinical student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and is currently living and learning in Jerusalem. Sarah has done extensive work around the issue of Israel-Palestine in a variety of contexts including IfNotNow, the Center for Jewish Nonviolence and the Reconstructing Judaism Joint Israel Commission. Additionally, she created “The God Cafe Project” curriculum with the goal of creating space for people to explore moments in their lives of divine connection/grappling through communal conversations discussing God/divinity.

Becca (she/her) is a ritualist, rabbinical student, culture worker, and Jewish outdoor educator who spends her days learning talmud and dreaming about joyous, diasporic, earth-connected Jewish communities past, present, and future. Since 2013, she has spent her career leading youth, teens, families, adults, and elders in connective Jewish experiences in wild places from 12,000-foot peaks to redwood forests to ice-cold rivers to urban gardens. Becca enjoys sunrises, making and sharing herbal medicine, belly laughing with her chevruta, and slow walks on shabbos afternoon.

Becca grew up near Chicago in the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations, and has been shaped by relationships with the lands of the Ohlone and Massachusetts peoples, on each coast of Turtle Island. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a B.S. in Mathematics from Tufts University, and anticipates Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew College in 2027. Becca is an alum of Urban Adamah, the JOFEE Fellowship, and the center for Jewish Nonviolence.

Arielle (they/she) is a Jewish scholar, artist, and farmer based in New York and Vermont. They have a master’s in Jewish Gender and Women’s Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary where they wrote their thesis on Mara Benjamin’s scholarship as a source for creating a new Jewish ecofeminist ethics. Arielle works with Shamir Collective to support client projects, manage websites, and be Sarah’s right hand for events.

Arielle also facilitates and teaches classes with older adults and teens at DOROT, lives and works at Living Tree Alliance, and directs Jewish Communities of Vermont’s (JCVT) statewide teen program.