Martha Ackelsberg

My relationship with B’not Esh has been one of the longest-standing, and most productive, of my life. I was there at its inception—in 1981—and have been coming ever since. Through B’not Esh I discovered that there were dramatically more open alternatives to the “traditional egalitarian” communities and modes of prayer in which I had participated in various havurot. We’ve explored God-language, movement, meditation, art and politics, as modes of spiritual expression (and vice versa); challenged ourselves to see the deep connections between politics, spirituality, sexuality, and more. Over the years, B’not Esh has led me to put almost every aspect of my life under a microscope, and to explore how to work more effectively with others toward creating the world in which I/we wish to live.

In addition to being a member of B’not Esh, I have engaged in writing, speaking and various forms of activism to address issues of feminism and LGBT inclusion within the Jewish community. I taught political science and women’s studies at Smith College for over forty years, while also singing in a local peace and justice chorus, and serving on the Northampton Housing Partnership, to promote affordable housing. I am now retired and living in NY, still singing in a chorus, enjoying regular time with my granddaughter, and devoting energies to addressing racism and white supremacy in the Jewish community and beyond.

Penina Adelman

Penina came of age in the 1960’s when Jewish Feminism was also coming of age. She wrote a book in 1976 called Riding the Nightmare with her mother, the historian, Selma R. Williams. It was about witchcraft persecution in Europe and Salem. This ignited her awareness of the oppression of women the world over which has led to a lifetime of writing about Jewish women, creative ritual and Midrash-making.

Joining B’not Esh in 1981, she has felt the group to be a tremendous support for her writing and continuing development as a Jewish feminist and human being. She continues to work as a psychotherapist with adults and as a Spiritual Director with rabbinical students in the Boston area. Currently, she is at work on a fictionalized memoir which begins at Creation.

Marla Brettschneider

Marla Brettschneider has been with B'not Esh since around 1995. To pay the bills, she is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire with a joint appointment in Politics and Women’s Studies. She has fancied herself an activist and publishes widely on Jewish diversity politics.

Barbara Breitman

When I read the preface to Womanspirit Rising: A Feminist Reader in Religion (1979) where Judith Plaskow and Carol Christ say they would not have finished graduate school in Religion without each other’s comradeship, I cried. Five years earlier I had dropped out of such a grad school because I couldn’t find a comrade. Joining B’not Esh in its second year, I found the companionship I yearned for to explore and create new understandings of spirituality and theology based on feminist experience and rooted in community. As a social worker and feminist psychotherapist, I became a professor of Pastoral Counseling and co-founder of the Spiritual Direction program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College where I’ve been for over 23 years; I was a founding teacher of Jewish Spiritual Direction training programs at Elat Chayyim/Isabella Freedman, the Rabbinical School at Hebrew College in Boston, and currently as consultant and teacher at HUC-JIR in New York and Los Angeles. I live in Philadelphia, now a grandma, part of a vibrant, progressive, multi-faith community where I am always learning and growing as an activist working toward creating a socially and racially just, sustainable human presence on/with our sacred earth.

Deborah Brin

Originally from Minneapolis, MN, I was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Pennsylvania in 1985, and that same year received a Master’s degree in Pastoral Counseling from LaSalle University. I have been privileged to be a member of B’not Esh since our second year, when I was still a rabbinic student at RRC in Philadelphia. I have had a wonderfully varied career serving in rabbinic, pastoral and chaplaincy positions in many settings. Among the first generation of lesbian rabbis, I was honored to lead the first women’s prayer service with a Torah reading at the Wall in 1988. I have served congregations in Canada and the U.S. and have held chaplaincy positions at Grinnell College, hospices in Albuquerque, and at a Jewish life-care retirement community outside of Philadelphia. I am Rabbi Emerita of Congregation Nahalat Shalom in Albuquerque, NM. I became a widow in October of 2024. My partner, Yael and I were together since 1992 and got married in 2015. The photograph of me that accompanies this bio was taken at the mass gay and lesbian wedding on the civic plaza in front of City Hall in Albuquerque the day that marriages became legal in New Mexico (Dec 19, 2013). I live in an astonishingly gorgeous part of Albuquerque, NM, and am grateful for my local and B’not Esh communities.

Tamara Cohen

Tamara has been a member of Bnot Esh for approximately 15 years. It has been a playground and laboratory for her to take risks and try new things as a Jewish feminist - particularly around ritual innovation and expanding the edges of her feminist advocacy and commitments. She has deeply benefited from the intergenerational community of friends, mentors and comrades who have provided their own lives as open living models of different ways of being and growing and weathering life’s challenges - professionally and personally in intense, and authentic ways. Working with Bnot Esh to build consensus and shared understanding about defining and redefining Jewish feminism in ways that have grown to include a deep commitment to trans liberation and racial justice has sharpened her ability to do this work in communities and with individuals outside of B’not Esh. As she goes older, she has grown into more gratitude for the unique gift of belonging to this lifetime Jewish feminist collective and she gets great joy out of it’s continued growth and change through each new member’s addition.

Tamara is a rabbi, liturgist, and queer partner and mom of two, living in Philadelphia. She currently builds feminist consciousness among teens of all genders through Moving Traditions.

Dianne Cohler-Esses

Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses was the first woman from the Syrian Jewish community to be ordained as a Rabbi. She currently serves as Rabbi and Director of Lifelong Learning at Romemu, a Renewal synagogue in New York City. She graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1995, where she was awarded several fellowships and a prize for academic excellence. Since that time she has served as an educator, scholar-in-residence, and administrator for multiple organizations in the Jewish world, including CLAL, The Bronfman Youth Fellowship, The Curriculum Initiative and UJA Federation. In addition to her rabbinic work at Romemu she currently co-teaches the Arts Beit Midrash at the Skirball Institute with Tobi Kahn, teaches courses at UJA Federation and writes and speaks regularly on Torah, Jewish values and family life, Jewish ethnicity and Judaism and disabilities.

Mary Gendler

Mary Gendler is a retired Psychologist living in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. In the 70's and 80's she wrote some of the earliest articles "outing" and lauding some of the earliest feminists in the bible, Lillith and Vashti.. She proposed new rituals for girls, including a special ceremony for first menstruation, and a female "circumcision" ceremony at 8 days which involved the ritual rupture of the baby's hymen. She spoke widely to different groups, especially women, about the importance of treating women as equals in Jewish practice, of modifying the language of prayers to include "she", and of referring to God as both male and female. She also stressed the importance of women being rabbis. She has been a member of B'not Esh since its inception, She remains an avid feminist, and is thrilled to see the many changes and opportunities for women in Jewish liturgy and practice.

Julie Greenberg

I've been a member of B'not Esh for more than thirty years. In that long journey there have been different eras of my life from the early years of training as a social justice organizer, rabbi and then therapist, to juggling earning a livelihood while having a house full of five young children, and now having an emptier nest and a whole new opportunity to engage with the world. My questions have stayed consistent: how to make my contribution to a better world, how to be part of a web of intimate connection, how to be a lifelong learner as I do all that? I'm in my eighteenth year as Rabbi of a Reconstructionist congregation in Philadelphia, I teach and supervise at the therapy training center Council for Relationships and work half of every week at the social justice organization POWER: An Interfaith Movement, currently chairing the work towards racial and economic justice on a livable planet. My current motto is Work Hard, Play Hard.

Barbara C. Johnson

I’m a retired professor of Anthropology & Jewish Studies (Ithaca College), now living happily with my partner in rural Vermont, where I’m involved in our small synagogue and various forms of racial justice activism, though unfortunately far away from my children and grandchildren. I’m a convert, having formally embraced Judaism in 1983 after many years of study and Havurah-style involvement - profoundly influenced by my long-term relationship with the “Cochini” Jews of South India in India and in Israel. Though I first met their community briefly in 1968 while I was living in India, I lived closely with them in Israel during my two years residence and many other visits there, and I’ve published extensively on Cochini Jewish history and culture with a focus on their women’s music. During my 34 years of membership in B'not Esh, I’ve loved our creative ritual celebrations, laughter and struggles - our differences and shared personal commitments to each other - and our growing commitment to the explicit social justice goals embodied in our 2018 Vision Statement, and to increased Jewish racial and cultural diversity in our membership.

Jane Rachel Litman

Rabbi Jane Rachel Litman is the San Francisco Bay Area Rabbi for Vitas Hospice. Widely published in the fields of Jewish women's history, queer theory and contemporary theology. Jane’s books Transkeit: Liberating Gender for Jews and Allies, and Lifecycles 2: Jewish Women on Scriptural Themes in Contemporary Life, co-edited with Rabbi Debra Orenstein, have won prestigious academic and community awards. Jane’s most recent work includes Krovai Elohim: All in God’s Family for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the essay on Judaism in Struggling in Good Faith. Jane was the first openly queer person admitted to rabbinical seminary in 1984, identifies as nonbinary, and is dedicated to promoting feminism and queer thought in all aspects of Jewish life and practice.

Nessa Norich

Nessa Norich is a Brooklyn-based writer, director, and actor. She has been performing for over 30 years, and has spent the last 7 years making films. Her short film, Jelly Bean, which she wrote, directed, and stars in, screened in 15 international film festivals this year, and is the recipient of the 2022 NYFA Women in Film grant. As an actor, Nessa has starred in numerous films and some tv. Her original devised works have been shown at the Edinburgh Fringe, British Film Institute, Getty Villa, Joe’s Pub, Battersea Arts Center, New Orleans Fringe, the Louvre, Hammerstein Ballroom, and Soapbox Theater in Oslo. Currently, Nessa writes and performs original songs with her drag boy band Earls2Gearls and country western band, We’re For Men. She is also developing and directing a new musical with poet/songwriter, Alicia Jo Rabins. She is an alum of Jacques Lecoq, Barnard College, Emerge NYC, and the New York Neo-Futurists.

Joelle Novey

Joelle is a relative newbie to Bnot Esh, having joined in the first year since the collective created an open membership process in 2019. I have come to see BE as no less than a womb in which a new world is being born. This multi-generational collective of fiery souls who love, affirm, take risks with, transform, forgive, and challenge each other away from the hierarchies and patriarchies of the world as it is makes it possible to conceive a new world for all of us. I feel so blessed by Bnot Esh in my work as a climate activist, and in my Jewish communities including Minyan Segulah in Washington DC.

Sara Paasche-Orlow

Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow works as the Director of Spiritual Care at Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston. She is a graduate of Oberlin College, ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a certified chaplain. She was the first Conservative Movement intern at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in NYC, and a founder of the Bavli Yerushalmi Project. Her current work includes leading a multi-campus chaplaincy department and CPE program, chairing a hospital ethics committee, leading an LGBTQ aging initiative, and is now beginning to focus more on chaplaincy research. She is the co-author of Deathbed Wisdom of the Hasidic Masters and many articles related to aging and spiritual care. She lives in Newton MA, is the mother of three children and is married to Michael Paasche-Orlow.

Sue Levi Elwell

I am one of the founders of B'not Esh, and the deep connections made and nurtured in this collective have been a primary anchor and continued source of growth in my life and work. Our annual retreats always serve, for me, as a source of examining, considering, and often reimagining and redirecting my life and my choices, as well as recharging our collective and individual work to bring about greater equity and inclusion in our world. As we go forth with new members, we consider our mission anew, and continue to be challenged, and changed.

After nearly 20 years of service to the Reform movement, I now serve as a Spiritual Director, a rabbi-activist, and sing with Philadelphia's Anna Crusis, the oldest feminist choir in the nation. I have been privileged to work with extraordinary colleagues on a range of books, most recently The First 50 Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honoring Women Rabbis. I divide my time between Philadelphia and Tel Aviv, and am the joyful mother of two and a half grown daughters and ecstatic savta to three emerging spirits.

Merle Feld

I’m startled to do the math and suddenly realize I've been a member of Bnot Esh for 40 years. Other identities which have been meaningful to me are poet, playwright, peace activist, educator and pioneering mentor to rabbis using writing as a spiritual practice to help them explore their authentic selves. Another statistic: I've been married for 55 years to Eddie Feld, a man I've fallen in love with again and again. I am mother to two adult children, a loving friend to many. I am happiest sitting on my porch; making Shabbos; helping people understand, cherish and celebrate who they are; opening people’s hearts as I read my poetry. (for details about my work, visit https://www.merlefeld.com/)

B’not Esh has been a community for me of beloved friends and fellow seekers who have pushed me, wrestled with me, admired me, made me cry, laughed me breathless, inspired me, challenged me to grow and become my fullest self.

Denni Liebowitz

I first attended a gathering of Jewish women in Cornwall-on-Hudson New York in 1983. There, I encountered a group of women who imagined creating something new though still without a shape; a group of rabbis, academics, artists, healers, and activists. When I arrived, the group did not yet have a name. But when we parted, we had named ourselves B’not Esh (women of fire) and some, I think, had a vision of a Jewish feminist spirituality collective that we might become. And what is marvelous is that we are still becoming.

For me, B’not Esh has been a place, a beloved collection of souls, even an idea - that has deepened my thinking and widened my experience of spiritual aliveness and connection as we share study, prayer, ritual, singing, movement, and the challenge of growing together. I treasure these relationships both old and new as we continue discovering ourselves anew.

I am a psychoanalyst and clinical social worker working to make contact with the depths in myself and others - in my consulting room and in the work I do in the community. I teach, supervise, and write. I live in Oakland California.

Yael Kanarek

Georgette Kennebrae

Georgette Kennebrae is a rabbi, financial advisor, and money coach based in Portugal. She enjoys using her knowledge in pastoral care, interpersonal dynamics, and financial education to help people create lives that are grounding, nurturing, and sustaining. She believes financial planning is personal and its impact is far-reaching: individually, locally, and globally. Her work allows her to journey with people through the joyous and hard moments in their lives and to help them explore and articulate their personal values. Those commitments serve as the guideposts to create and nurture a meaningful life and vibrant community.

She was born in Japan and has lived around the world ever since. She now lives on the tiny island of Porto Santo. She has a love of travel, culture, and sailing both turquoise and deep blue waters. She is honored to lead services and officiate weddings, b. mitzvah, and other ritual lifecycle moments in places across the globe.

Georgette is passionate about speaking new languages, eating delicious international food, and learning dances, cards, and board games in each country she visits. She has three adult children who love planning a rendez-vous wherever she may be in the world.

Orly Michaeli

Orly joined B’not Esh in 2020 and is in awe to be in community with many of the Jewish thinkers and creators who inspired her. She was born in Guatemala, where she was 1 of 5 Jews her age, and now lives in NYC. Orly founded and ran the Jewish feminist organization, Wominyan, which asked the questions “what would Judaism look like today if women had been a part of the Sanhedrin”? She’s continued exploring her relationship to Judaism and feminism by crafting rituals for milestones, baking the very occasional cinnamon challah, and of course, by being a part of B’not Esh.

Sonja Pilz

Rabbi Sonja K. Pilz, PhD, earned her doctorate from the department of Rabbinic Literature at Potsdam University in Germany and holds Rabbinic Ordination from Abraham Geiger College in Germany. Prior to becoming the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Shalom, she worked for the Central Conference of American Rabbis as Editor of CCAR Press. She also taught Worship, Liturgy, and Ritual at HUC-JIR in New York and the School of Jewish Theology at Potsdam University, and served as a rabbinic intern, adjunct rabbi, and cantorial soloist for congregations in Germany, Switzerland, Israel, and the US. Not surprisingly, she loves to write poetry, midrashim, and prayers. Her work has been published in ERGON, Liturgy, Worship, the CCAR Journal, Ritual Well, and a number of anthologies. She lives with her husband and children in Bozeman, MT.

Judith Plaskow

Judith Plaskow is a Jewish feminist theologian and a founding member of B’not Esh. The group has been crucial to the development of both my feminist perspective and my spiritual life. I have formed life-long friendships through B’not Esh and learned how to begin to imagine what it means to create a feminist Judaism. B’not Esh taught me how to create new rituals, stretch the boundaries of Jewish thought and practice, and explore the intersection of gender and gender identity with sexuality, race, class, politics, and many other issues. I have learned a sense of power as a Jew through the group that I can’t imagine having acquired in any other context. My partner Martha Ackelsberg and I are both retired from teaching and are studying Jewish texts, singing in a chorus, doing social justice work, going to the theater and grandparenting, among other things.

Brielle Paige Rassler

Rabbi Dr. Brielle Paige Rassler is a licensed psychologist, mashpiah ruchanit (spiritual director), author, and artist. She maintains a private practice and serves as Lead Chaplain of Integrative Wellness at Penn Medicine Princeton Health. She has released two albums of original liturgical music and has served with prayer leadership teams at various congregations, including Romemu in NYC and Mishkan Shalom in Philly. In addition to her emerging series of sacred text translations, R. Dr. Brielle has authored a reference guide to the Talmud and a manual for religiously integrated treatment of Jewish women with Eating Disorders. Her Psalms translations have been featured in multiple publications and her full translation, “Psalms: A Millennial’s Poetic Interpretation” was selected as a Gold Award winner of the 2023 Nautilus Book Awards. www.BriellePaigeRassler.com

Geela Rayzel Raphael

Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael- is an “unorthodox” visionary rabbi, your basic wild woman Shechinah Priestess. Ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, she also has private s’micha from Reb Zalman- Schacter Shalomi z”l. An active member of Jewish Renewal, she serves as the Director of Spiritual Arts at Aleph, curating special programs to enhance community and shine a light on Jewish creativity. She is a founder of the Nechama Minyon, a nightly Ma’ariv virtual community, co-founder of Women of the Wall and the co-producer of the Adding our Voices Archive: Jewish Feminist and Gender-Inclusive Music Archive housed at Hanover University.

Reb Rayzel, as she is affectionately called, is also an award-winning singer/songwriter and liturgist with a number of recordings to her name. She authored two children’s books: Angels for Dreamtime and New Moon. Rabbi Rayzel leads Jewish spiritual travel adventures to exotic places. For more information on all her many projects - her Shechinah Oracle deck, see her website www.Shechinah.com

Julie Sissman

Julie Sissman is a proud and grateful member of Bnot Esh. Professionally, Julie is a Leadership and Executive Coach with a demonstrated track record of supporting clients to achieve their goals and be their best selves. Before starting her own business, Julie was a coach and consultant in IBM’s Enterprise Leadership Consulting Group, where she served as a trusted advisor to IBM’s senior executives in their mission to transform and integrate IBM. Prior to joining ELC, Julie served as an Organization and Change Strategy Consultant at IBM, where she enabled IBM’s external clients to successfully implement large-scale transformational projects. Before IBM, Julie served as Associate Director of Hazon, a Jewish environmental organization, and she held several roles in other corporate and non-profit organizations.

As a lay leader, Julie is active in the Jewish giving circle world, is a former Board President of Schechter Manhattan, serves on the Advisory Board of jGirlsMagazine, and is a MikvehGuide with ImmerseNYC.

Ruth Sohn

I discovered the spiritual depth and richness of Judaism as a young adult at the end of college in the mid-‘70s, at the same time that I was engaging with feminism for the first time and from the start, these two paths were deeply connected. Like so many who came to our first gathering in 1981, I was looking for a place I could bring my whole self, and not just parts of myself. This has been one of the great gifts and challenges of Bnot Esh, that it invites each of us to continue to bring our full selves, open to ours and others’ yearnings, questions, and growing edges, and to learn and explore together in order to deepen our understanding and ways of living as Jewish feminists in the world, in all aspects of our lives. My rabbinic work has included traditional text study with adults of all ages, and more recently, the practice and teaching of Jewish mindfulness practice and companioning others as a Spiritual Director. I currently oversee the Spiritual Direction program at Hebrew Union College in NY, LA, and Cincinnati. My articles, biblical commentary and midrash have appeared in various books and periodicals including Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of our Lives and The Torah: A Women’s Commentary. In Crossing Cairo: A Jewish Woman’s Encounter with Egypt, I share my experiences living in Egypt in 2006 with my family and explore the question of what it means to genuinely listen to the “Other’s” narrative and use it as a lens for examining one’s own. My life partner, Reuven Firestone, and I are blessed with three wonderful adult children, their partners, and now also our first grandchild.

Max Strassfeld

Max Strassfeld can't remember how long he has been a part of Bnot Esh, but it is a surprisingly long time now. He is an academic working in rabbinics and trans studies at the University of Southern California. He is a parent, partner, and occasionally doodles or binds books on the side.

Leora Zeitlin

I am an editor, writer, publisher and radio host, and spend a lot of my days professionally immersed in literature and music. I joined Bnot Esh in 1984 and have literally “grown up” with Bnot Esh for most of my adult life. In my Jewish communities, I love creating innovative services, from creative shofar/Musaf services on Rosh Hashanah to experiential Shabbat, havdallah, and other services during the year. I’ve taught Jewish topics to children, teens and adults in informal settings, including Jewish feminism, traditional and creative prayer, Torah, and book discussions. And I enjoy writing new lyrics to old songs to make people laugh – a tradition for me for many years at Bnot Esh. Professionally, I’m co-director of Zephyr Press, a literary press based in Boston that publishes contemporary poetry and prose in translation from Russia, eastern Europe, east Asia and elsewhere, as well as some American literature. I’m also the classical music radio host at KRWG-FM, which broadcasts throughout southern New Mexico. I have two grown children and have lived with my life partner Stuart Kelter in Las Cruces, New Mexico since 1991.

Becka Tilsen

Becka Tilsen was raised by 3 generations of brassy Midwest working class radicals who love to laugh. Becka is a somatics practitioner, facilitator, narrative strategist and multi-medium creative. Becka cares deeply about building mass movements for social justice that our irresistibly compelling in our culture and irrefutably formidable in our strategy. She can be found back in her hometown on Minneapolis sometimes wearing a giant ancestor puppet on her back.

Members of Bnot Esh