2023 Financial Patronage Appeal

When you support me, you become my patron, and support my mission and my vision.

Zlata kept coming back for hugs. I have just spent an hour sitting across from an Ukranian family by a folding table in a large kitchen tent in Krakow, Poland put up to feed Ukrainian refugees. I conversed with Zlata while she drew this portrait of me, and while I was drawing hers, exchanging curious looks at each other’s art-making. Between markmaking, I conversed with her mother and siblings using a translator app. Recalling this, threads of meaning weave in my mind -  this being the days before Passover and Easter, I being a rabbinic and cantorial student serving a mostly Catholic refugee population; using the universal language of art; bringing my meditation-trained attention into action; this being the homeland of my paternal ancestors before many of them were killed, now a refugee for these Ukrainian displaced people; my return there to serve them, not only as an incognito clergy, not only as humanitarian activist, nor only as an artist - but as all of these together. 

Since then I started training at Westchester Medical Center, a trauma 1 regional hospital, as a volunteer chaplain intern. All this while continuing my rabbinic and cantorial studies. I afford all this from personal funds and by offering practice & teaching as my studies and volunteer schedule allows.

I am blessed to live such a single-pointed life. It takes determination, and resources. If you believe in the causes above - ancestral healing, chaplaincy, cross-cultural humanitarian support, meditation, non-dual Jewish and Buddhist teachings, preserving and disseminating Ashkenazi cultural music & prayer and exploring modern monastic experience, please consider making a financial contribution for my next year of deployment. Here is more about what I mean:

Context

The purpose of writing this is to offer more clarity on what you support when you pay me for a service, when you make a welcomed unsolicited contribution, or when you choose to enter a patronage relationship with me.

Across continents, cultures and epochs, Buddhist monks, sufi dervishes, and mendicant rabbis, in ancient Palestine, Persia, or pre-modern Ashkenazi Europe, individuals who offered spiritual guidance and healing have long depended on the generosity of their communities and individual patrons for their support, either directly on their begging rounds, or by providing their services. 

The late Bernie Glassman, my Zen buddhist teacher, drilled into me the importance of not cutting off money as part of a spiritual life, seeing money both as energy that can move, generate and enliven and also as an opportunity for those who have financial means to give by practicing generosity. By doing so, one would raise awareness to the causes they financially support through inviting others.

All year-round contributions, towards teachings, leadership offerings, deployments or unsolicited ones support this appeal.

The year 2023 is especially fiscally vulnerable as more of my time is dedicated to completing my trainings at the Seminary and the hospital - time that I can’t use to develop and roll out other strategies of support. 2024 will allow more of that, and my trainings will end at the begining of the following year.

How does it work?

By contributing to me through one of my offerings, you are strengthening our personal bond as well as supporting my mission - I carry your support in my various deployments and know that I have your wind at my back - this is a tremendous support to me. I will report back to my patrons on what I do - so you get to see the effect of your contribution.

For exceptional benefactors who wish to enter a high-level patronage relationship with me, we will agree on a specifically-tailored offering plan in exchange for your support. This may include for example but not limited to: private meditation coaching, pastoral care, spiritual direction, teaching, davening/song/music events and original artwork.

I am operating as a private individual, not under any fiscal sponsorship or nonprofit organization. This enables me to go where I'm needed; teach and daven what moves through me; be present in moments of need as they arise. Contributions to me are not tax deductible for US tax purposes. For particular projects, I may partner with fiscal sponsors, in which case I’ll make that known. 

I have considered developing a tiered patronage strategy as seen on kickstarter, Gofundme or Patreon, but I decide to not allocate the time required to manage and concentrate on the work and study I already do, at least until these are complete.

What Are You Supporting?

By contributing towards these goals, you’re not just supporting me, you’re supporting other emerging cutting-edge clergy students, the seminary and hospital that trains me:

(1) my Rabbinic and Cantorial training in the Aleph Ordination program for 2022-2023, to be completed in early 2025;

(2) study with visionary Rabbi Art Green in a Smicha (rabbinic transmission) cohort, to be complete in late 2024;

(3) Chaplaincy Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) at Westchester Medical Center, October 2022 - June 2023, where I am currently employed as an unpaid chaplain intern, caring for patients, their families and the staff at a trauma 1 regional hospital in the greater New York City area.

In addition to these trainings, you support my work, identified as:

Hebrew Peacemaker: Grounded in Not Knowing. Rooted with Ancestors. Engaging the World. Where my ancestral karmic emanation meets those of others, inspiring action in the world that is elevated by the meetings of these ancestral strands with my specific Jewish one. The place of the particularly jewish meeting of the particular others, and the universal. Inter-faith, deep ecumenism, humanitarian work. Appreciation of Buddhist culture holders. Expressions : Humanitarian work, Niggunum / music portals, bearing witness & interfaith dialogue, social and ecological action. Inspired by my mentor Bernie Glassman.

Tohu Wisdom School of Jewish Non-duality: My signature awareness and non-dual weaving of ancient & modern Hebraic teachings, through modern teachings influenced by my training in Zen Buddhist, its poetic teaching and my affinity to the systematic Yogacara school of Buddhism investigating consciousness, dveykus melodies - hassidic technologies evoking yearnings as gates to awareness, and world entheogenic plant medicine, and art-making.

Nazir: Temple of One: Heeding the call of the Jewish Monastic Impulse.  A lifestyle based on a focus that makes me thrive, not a process of elimination or abdication. Inspired by world monastic traditions, both nomadic and cloistered, and interested in ecumenical conversation with these traditions. Ancestral healing, decentralizing community and rabbinic law from one experience of God and ancestral connection in exchange of developing radical interiority and finding authority in direct experience with mystery. Nazir: ToO is an expression of Tohu school, and an exploration of what I refer to as a ‘Person of Tohu’. The Cloister, The battlefield, the refuge camp, The marketplace, the fellowship, the fireplace... Inspired by my life at Zen Mountain Monastery, founded by John Daido Loori Roshi.

Ancestral:Emergent: The ancestral (particular) meeting the emergent moment, expressing the vastest universalist horizon, grounded in the experience of Not Knowing. Expressed through Bearing Witness & Council practice, dialogue, humanitarian work, cross-cultural peace-building. This is also the home for creativity ceremonies, exploration of the creation impulse and flow states as universal expressions. Inspired by my mentor Dr. Paula Green and a lifelong practice of art.

Publication: I am currently collecting all of my written teachings, along with autobiographical essays, in a book that will hopefully capture the vision expressed here.

Gratitude

I recognize that such a personal appeal for financial patronage may be unusual, and I offer this for the small chance you may be inspired to offer it in the smallest, or grandest way.

I am so thankful to those of you who have already supported me financially this year or before - whether in exchange for our studies together, or through direct gifts. You keep me focused, oriented and connected.

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Visit my contribution page to make one, or contact me to discuss a substantial patronage agreement.