SPIRITUAL, GAY, JEWISH, INTERFAITH & ROMANTIC WEDDINGS, RITUALS AND BLESSINGS: You are the real deal!

Thursday, August 30, 2007

You are the real deal!

"I am a wedding photographer seeking an officant for friends. In all my years of attending and photographing wedding ceremonies, I have witnessed a wide range and quantity of officiants. Sara, I honestly want you to know that you were my favorite of all those I have ever met. Your weddings are spiritual and bring in strong divine energy. The experience of what you contribute to the couple stands out in my memory as unique and unmatched. You are the real deal."

WEDDING ACCOLADES

"You have an amazing way of captivating an audience since the majority of the guests were not your tribe and probably were never at a Jewish wedding before. Everyone was totally comfortable, listened, learned and enjoyed. It was absolutely perfect, we loved your voice, and we cannot thank you enough for making it more than a memorable occasion for us."

"Our wedding ceremony was wonderful, thanks to you. We are so grateful that you stepped into our life at just the right time. Thank you for guiding us though each pre-marital step, with kindness and explanation. Your blessings put us on our own sacred journey as husband and wife."

"Thank you for a truly meaningful, moving, and beautiful ceremony. Your moral support was so appreciated."

About Rabbi and Cantor Sara Shendelman

Rabbi Cantor Sara Shendelman performs unique, inspired and inclusive weddings all over the country in natural outdoor as well as eclectic indoor settings. Her beautiful voice enriches the ritual she creates for any occasion. She has been honored to provide ongoing spiritual guidance, officiating at milestone events, for couples as they plan their lives together, welcome their babies into the world, and celebrate seasonal and lifecycle events with their families.

Rabbi Cantor Sara Shendelman is one of the best-known Jewish Renewal rabbis in Berkeley, California. She received Cantorial Ordination from Rabbis Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Shlomo Carlebach, the only woman to do so. She received full rabbinal smicha (rabbinic ordination) from Rabbi Gershon Winkler.

Rabbi Cantor Sara Shendelman was a leader in the early days of the Jewish Renewal Movement, from which she was awarded the title of Eshet Hazon (Woman of Vision). Sara has taught, led services, officiated and created ritual for 30 years. She holds an M.A. in Education and Developmental Arts from NYU.

Rabbi Sara served as Cantor, Rabbi and Core Faculty for Chochmat HaLev , Wisdom of the Heart Center for Jewish Spirituality in Berkeley. Sara performs a lively and interactive service that introduces the Kabbalat Shabbat service and Friday night rituals through prayer, song, storytelling and more. She designed the program especially for those who are new or returning to Judaism, beginners to Shabbat practice, and families with children of all ages.

Rabbi Cantor Sara Shendelman is the Founder and Director of the Jewish Arts and Culture School (JACTS), established in 1995. At JACTS, students are exposed to different ideologies existing within Judaism so that they can participate and feel comfortable in a variety of Jewish settings. Teachers use art, music, puppets, drama, discussion, dance and text to help students form a loving attachment to Jewish culture, spirituality and history. The curriculum includes Hebrew reading and writing, ritual traditions, Jewish calendar celebrations, Torah and Eastern European stories, Israel, Jewish distinctions, and mitzvot. The student body ranges in age from preschool through post-Bar/Bat Mitzvah and represents a cross-section of all cultural and ethnic backgrounds, religious experience and family orientations. Parents and family members are included in the classroom and at celebrations.

Rabbi Sara's beautiful singing can be heard on 3 music CDs which she has produced, including "I Did Lift You Up" and "Chasing the Gazelle." Sara's musical talents are shared generously in all her endeavors as rabbi, ordained cantor, professional singer, musician, wedding officiant, teacher and ritual leadership.

Rabbi Sara’s writings have been cited in numerous books about Jewish culture and spirituality. Her published work includes the book: Traditions: The Complete Book of Prayers, Rituals; Blessings for Every Jewish Home (Hyperion).

BABY NAMING RITUAL

From J. the Jewish news weekly of Northern California

Cantorial soloist Sara Shendelman helps couples personalize the baby-naming event.

"What we do is deal with existing tradition," said Shendelman.

She finds it useful to draw on women's mitzvot, good deeds. One is the mikveh, the ritual bath, she said, "so we wash the baby's feet."

Shendelman also likes to involve siblings in the ceremony, as she did at her own newborn's naming.

"My older daughter poured water over her sister's feet," she said.

Girls, she said, are lucky, because they can experience the Jewish sense of community without the discomfort of circumcision.

"With everyone at the ceremony surrounding you, this is an indication of what life will be, this loving Jewish family. You are a part [of that family] and you aren't alone.

Berkeley songwriter offers mix of soulful, meditative

From The Jewish Bulletin, Friday August 21, 1998
SARAH HOROWITZ
Jewish Bulletin Correspondent

Singer and songwriter Sara Shendelman says Jewish music "speaks to my soul."

In her recent recordings, "I Did Lift You Up" and "Chasing the Gazelle," she gives voice to her inner passion. Harmonizing the traditional with the new, she makes the blend seem effortless.

"There's something eternal" about Jewish music, says the Berkeley resident, an ordained cantor in the Jewish Renewal movement. "It's at a level much deeper than thinking about it."

"I Did Lift You Up" is a mix of traditional Jewish music and text put to Shendelman's original compositions along with interpretations of other contemporary Jewish musicians, like Shlomo Carlebach.

A familiar performer at Bay Area Jewish events, Shendelman is the founder and director of the Jewish Arts and Culture School in Berkeley. She's also an artist, specializing in Jewish craft items.

As a child growing up in Memphis, Tenn., Shendelman sang around the Shabbat table or at her family's Conservative synagogue. But she dates her connection to music even further back.

"I'm a bat Levi ," a female descendent of the Levites, she says. "We were the poets and musicians at the Temple."

In addition to music, she pursued other Jewish activities. As a teenager, she joined B'nai B'rith International where she had the opportunity to learn from people like Elie Wiesel.

"That was a watershed point," she says. "I went from a provincial Jewish education to studying with some of the luminaries in the Jewish world."

In 1985, at a Renewal gathering at Bryn Mawr College, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi invited her to become ordained. Shendelman is the first, and to her knowledge, only ordained, Renewal cantor.

The emphasis on meditation in the Renewal movement inspired her other recording, "Chasing the Gazelle."

"Gazelle" is a powerful mix of Tibetan bells, traditional instruments and Hebrew chants that Shendelman calls "Jewish meditation music." For "Gazelle," Shendelman set her metronome below the normal heart rate to help people slow down.

"Jewish meditation is absolutely essential for most Jews to have any kind of spiritual life, to have that quiet introspection," she says.

"The Jewish path is trying to find divinity in each person and if we're too wound up, we can't connect."

Shendelman has a broad view of meditation. For her, both singing and bicycling are conducive to meditative states.

"People meditate in all different kinds of ways. You don't have to be sitting quietly. You can be bicycling, walking down the street, listening to music. Some need absolute silence and some can be walking through downtown."

The frantic pace of modern life heightens the need for meditation, she says.
"The busy-ness of life really necessitates that we take time to quiet ourselves," she says. "That's why Shabbat is so essential. That's why there's been such a resurgence in meditation."

Shendelman knows from busy. Besides recording music and running the Jewish arts and culture school, the mother of two has recently released a book on blessings for Jewish homes.

"Chasing the Gazelle" has been used by preschool teachers, women's Rosh Chodesh groups and families, as well as meditators.

It's the power of music to move and transform people that fuels Shendelman's passion.

"When people come up to me and say, `I love your singing,' what they're saying is the music was healing."

Rabbi Sara In the News

Rabbis encourage ‘watering of the soul’ on Days of Awe
Friday September 14, 2007
San Francisco J Weekly
by stacey palevsky
staff writer

“Al-chet is translated as sin, but it’s not really a sin in Judaism, it actually means ‘having missed the mark,’” said Sara Shendelman, a Renewal rabbi at Berkeley’s Chochmat HaLev.

“It’s as if you were walking through the woods on a path, but you get distracted and you go off the path into poison oak. But you can get back on the path you were walking. You can make teshuvah [repentance], go back to that path and become your best self.”

"The soul grows by connecting to the external (friends, family, community service, social action) and the internal (learning, reading, thinking, praying). The soul you are born with is not necessarily the soul you will die with, since numerous external and internal forces affect the way a person’s soul grows (or stagnates)."

Many Jewish thinkers also believe that not only is the soul the vehicle by which humans connect to God, but that the soul is a part of God.

“Personally, I believe that if all creation is one, then all creation is God,” Shendelman said. “A part of God is in everyone’s soul. We are all part of the great oneness of God.”

At times a soul teeters on the brink of no return, following a particularly bad deed or string of bad deeds. What happens if you go through life without ever feeling remorse for your missteps?Judaism has no purgatory. Instead, the rabbis wrote of Gehenna. Long ago, Gehenna was a garbage dump outside of Jerusalem.

(“Maybe it was the filthiest place the rabbis could imagine,” Shendelman guessed).

http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/33542/format/print/displaystory.print

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Independent Sunday schools fill niche in Bay Area
Friday July 27, 2007
J. The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California
by penina eilberg-schwartz

Jewish education is “a great gift, and a gift that’s available” — whether or not you’re affiliated with a synagogue...

...Another option in Berkeley is Chochmat HaLev’s Jewish Arts, Culture and Torah School (JACTS). It, too, offers drama and music, as well as Hebrew and history.

The principal, Rabbi Sara Shendelman, believes that the school succeeds because it helps students feel “connected” to Judaism. It serves preschool- through eighth-grade students.

A rabbi ordained in the Renewal movement, Shendelman says teachers use a “more spiritual approach” in the classroom. But she also notes that JACTS is a place that accommodates parents who want their children to enjoy strong Jewish identities without overwhelming commitment. JACTS employs “creativity, music, arts, and making of ritual objects” to help kids explore what it means to be Jewish.

Corliss Lesser, whose daughter went through JACTS’ bat mitzvah program, now is an arts instructor at the school. During her eight years with JACTS as a teacher, she has enjoyed helping children express themselves through the arts.

In founding the school, (which was established before the birth of the associated Chochmat HaLev), Shendelman hoped that artists like Lesser could have freedom to teach in an inclusive and highly artistic environment.....

SPIRITUAL, GAY, JEWISH, INTERFAITH & ROMANTIC WEDDINGS, RITUALS AND BLESSINGS

Thursday, August 30, 2007

You are the real deal!

Rabbi Sara

Sara Shendelman Blog Updates

Blog Archive

WEDDING ACCOLADES

As Cantor

About Rabbi and Cantor Sara Shendelman

Sara Shendelman is referred by the following resources:

Sara Blessing the Challah

BABY NAMING RITUAL

Berkeley songwriter offers mix of soulful, meditative

* Rabbi * Cantor * Teacher * Singer Wedding Officiant Ritual Leader

Search blog by Category

Rabbi Sara In the News

Bride's Choice Award 2011

Visitors

SPIRITUAL, GAY, JEWISH, INTERFAITH & ROMANTIC WEDDINGS, RITUALS AND BLESSINGS

Thursday, August 30, 2007

You are the real deal!

Rabbi Sara

Sara Shendelman Blog Updates

Blog Archive

WEDDING ACCOLADES

As Cantor

About Rabbi and Cantor Sara Shendelman

Sara Shendelman is referred by the following resources:

Sara Blessing the Challah

BABY NAMING RITUAL

Berkeley songwriter offers mix of soulful, meditative

* Rabbi * Cantor * Teacher * Singer *Wedding Officiant *Ritual Leader

Search blog by Category

Rabbi Sara In the News

Bride's Choice Award 2011

Visitors

* Rabbi * Cantor * Teacher * Singer Wedding Officiant Ritual Leader