The Torah of our Lands: Hasidic Study for Diasporic Belonging
The Torah of our Lands: Hasidic Study for Diasporic Belonging (with Yael Roberts)
Mondays, March 24th - April 7th
7:30-9:00pm GMT (2:30pm-4:00pm ET / 11:30am-1:00pm PT)
Recordings sent to participants after each session
In this time of crisis and rupture, how can we resource ourselves through ecological stories while grounding in our own heritage? In this three-part online series we will explore the possibilities of Nature as Teacher, and turn our ears to the Torah waiting for us in our deepest connection to river, mountain, and sea.
We will explore texts from the Noam Elimelech and the Kedushat Levi, Rabbis from the Eastern European Hasidic movement that renewed Judaism in the 18th century. All text will be provided in the original and in translation. Homework between each session will offer nature connection practices to embody the texts.
Session 1: The Divine River (Monday 24th March)
Session 2: The Ancestral Mountain (Monday 31st March)
Session 3: The Love Song of the Sea (Monday 7th April)
All sessions 7:30-9pm GMT
Yael Roberts is a Jewish educator and artist based in London. She has taught at Azara, Limmud, and on many Miknaf retreats. For over a decade she has been learning and teaching Hasidic texts.
Ticket Info
Sliding Scale £36/£50/£65. No one turned away for lack of funds. Please be generous if you can and please keep the supported rate for those who really need it. If none of these options work for you, please get in touch for a cheaper or free ticket at: hello@miknafhaaretz.co.uk
Our spaces are accessible to anyone who identifies as jewish, whether that means you are born jewish, coming back to your judaism or on a conversion journey, or if you don't feel 'jewish enough'. If this is your first time in a jewish space, please get in touch in advance, we’d love to check in with you.
If there’s anything else we can do to support your access, presence and comfort at these sessions please let us know at hello@miknafhaaretz.co.uk
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Miknaf Ha'aretz organises to heal, repair and transform Jewish belonging & connection to land. We are cultivating earth-based, radical, diasporist jewish community in the UK through immersive, courses, retreats & events exploring nature-connection, food & land justice & regenerative farming. We insist on uplifting Jewish safety, belonging and re-connection to land through a politics of solidarity and collective liberation.
Learn more: @miknafhaaretz and www.miknafhaaretz.co.uk
Homeland: a Virtual Series Exploring Radical Belonging with Miknaf Ha'aretz & Friends
Homeland: a Virtual Series Exploring Radical Belonging with Miknaf Ha'aretz & Friends
Thursdays, February 13th, 20th, 27th, March 6th & Tuesday March 11th
7:30-9:00pm GMT (2:30pm-4:00pm ET / 11:30am-1:00pm PT)
Recordings sent to participants after each session
In times of increasing nationalism, fascism & border violence, how do we cultivate liberatory relationships with land in ways that heal, nourish, repair and transform us all? Learning from those on the front-lines of the violence of empire protecting their lands and culture from erasure, assimilation & theft, join us for our latest virtual series exploring the possibilities of finding homeland, healing and liberation beyond nationalism and nation-states.
Join us with some very special guests in February & March to cultivate more understanding, community and solidarity around these issues.
These sessions will be held by co-founders of Miknaf Ha'aretz Sara Moon and Samson Hart who will be joined by guest presenters.
Miknaf Ha'aretz is building earth-based, radical-diasporist, jewish community in the UK & organising for land justice for all.
Learn more: @miknafhaaretz and www.miknafhaaretz.co.uk
These sessions are open to everybody. Whilst there are some sessions that might speak to Jewish themes around belonging, the series is aimed at a broad audience and we will be covering many aspects and examples of land justice, homeland and belonging. You do not have to be Jewish to attend, and no prior knowledge will be assumed.
You can join for the whole series or for individual sessions and all sessions will be recorded and sent out to participants after each session.
You can join for the whole series or for individual sessions and all sessions will be recorded and sent out to participants after each session. You can find more information about individual sessions below.
Sessions
Session 1: Thursday 13th February. The Land in Our Bones* with Mariam Mohamed & Tasha Elena Stevens-Vallecillo
Wherever we go, the medicinal power of plants & fungi is at our sides, abundant and generous. For diasporic peoples, relationship with ancestral plants can be a source of deep healing and connection. In this session we will be exploring plant connection as antidote to empire and powerful affirmation of belonging.
*The title of this session is taken from the wonderful book of this name by Layla K.Feghali.
Session 2: Thursday 20th February. We all belong here: A conversation about Migrant Justice (with Mona Bani, founder and director of Revoke).
In times of increasing displacement through climate breakdown, war, violence and increasing fascism and state instability, how do we build structures to support migrants to find belonging and home in new lands? In this session we will be learning from Mona Bani, founder and director of Revoke, a grassroots organisation advocating for young displaced young people, care-leavers, and those affected by the criminal justice system, living without advocates, families, power, or a voice. Mona will also be joined by a young advocate from revoke.
Session 3: Thursday 27th February. Seeding Reparations: Land as a site of repair (with Andre Kpodonu, Seeding Reparations)
Britain had a foundational role in the colonisation, displacement and genocide of millions of people across the world, as well as the formation of our current neo-colonial capitalist economic system. In this session we will be joined by Andre Kpodonu from Seeding Reparations to ask how land based reparations might support the repair, healing, belonging and sovereignty for many people in the UK affected by the legacies of British colonialism.
Session 4: Thursday 6th March. Farming on the frontlines: Stories from Gaza (with Muna Dajani & George McAllister)
For the last 15 months, Gaza has faced an unprecedented assault on all aspects of life and infrastructure. In this session we will learn more of the scale of this destruction in Gaza, while exploring stories of steadfastness that continue to endure as people continue to tend their homeland and produce food in the midst of genocide.
Session 5: Tuesday 11th March - ‘Building a Museum of Enclosure’ (with organisers from House of Annetta)
In our last session of the series we will be joined by organisers from House of Annetta to consider the impacts of ‘Enclosure’ and how sharing the stories of these impacts might offer more liberatory ways of relating to home and land.
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Speaker Bios
More coming soon.
Tasha Elena Stevens-Vallecillo had a dual Heritage from both Nicaragua in Latin America and England. Her insights into small scale, peasant and indigenous culture have greatly informed her approach to land, food and medicine and the call to serve the sacredness of all life. She founded Land, Food and Medicine at 42 Acres in 2024 where she has been for seven years. As the daughter of parents who had to flee war Tasha found belonging in Nature after feeling completely alien with her values, culture and ways of feeling the world growing up in a council area in London. These senses and knowings are things she is giving language to now, through rediscovering herself and wisdom through spiritual land based practice. Tasha is an outdoor mushroom farmer growing using ancient techniques originally from Asia, she is a medicinal crop grower using wild tending techniques and a community bridge builder, activator and most importantly mother.
Mariam Mohamed (she/her) is a community herbalist, medical herbalist trainee, grower and mother who lives in Totnes, South Devon. She was born and raised in London and her ancestral roots lie in the Horn of Africa. She stewards a community herb garden based at School Farm, Dartington. She is founder and director of Radical Plant Folk C.I.C, an accessible community growing project that supports community sharing on plant knowledge and cultural heritage. Alongside running folk herbalism workshops, she organises wellbeing spaces in nature for black, mixed heritage and people of colour, often exploring themes around identity, belonging and healing with the land. Her work centers around land justice, belonging in the countryside, decolonisation and reclaiming relationship with land.
Mona Bani is the founder of Revoke, a grassroots organisation working with young displaced people in London, and co-founder of the award winning media platform Untelevised, which documents grassroots work, to explore possibilities for social change. Here she produced the podcast series 'Land for Who?', in partnership with NEF and Shared Assets. For her migration work she's been selected as a Clore Lived Experience Leader in the Migration sector, a Thirty Percy Changemaker, an advisor to the GLA Migration Team, and she appears regularly on international media, including the BBC, LBC and Moviestar+, speaking against the hostile environment. Her own parents were political refugees from Iran, and she grew up in Denmark before migrating to the UK as a teenager.
Ticket Info
Per session: £7.50 (Limited) / £10 / £15 / £20
All sessions: £37 (Limited) / £50 / £75 / £100
These sessions are ticketed so we can properly support our amazing array of speakers (and keep building the jewish diasporist world to come!). Please be generous if you can and please keep the supported rate for those who really need it. If none of these options work for you, please get in touch for a cheaper or free ticket at: hello@miknafhaaretz.co.uk
If you'd like to join live - you'll need to have purchased a ticket by 6pm on the day of the session in order to receive the link on time. If you sign up for 'all sessions' once the series has begun you will still receive recordings of all sessions.
Session Format
We aim to make these sessions as accessible as possible. The sessions themselves will be very informal. Samson Hart and Sara Moon will introduce the sessions, offer some brief framing and then they will mostly be offered in a webinar style with the participants muted until question time at the end. You will be invited to participate with video on or off and we will take a short ‘bio’ break half-way through the session. All sessions will offer closed captioning and will be recorded for later viewing or re-watch.
If there’s anything else we can do to support your access, presence and comfort at these sessions please let us know at hello@miknafhaaretz.co.uk.
With deep gratitude to Miranda Cohen for the beautiful art work...
Website: mcohendesign.com
Instagram: @mirandacohenmakes
ORFC Shabbat Dinner with Miknaf Ha'aretz & the Jewish Farmer Network
ORFC Shabbat Dinner with Miknaf Ha'aretz & the Jewish Farmer Network
Welcoming all Jewish* farmers and Jewish attendees of the Oxford Real Farming Conference to join us for Shabbat dinner on Friday 10th January.
We will gather in community, light candles together, bring in the shabbat with kabbalat shabbat songs and prayers, feast and reflect on our time at the ORFC. We will invite conversation around our relationship to land as both Jewish peoples with histories of displacement from land, and farmers (or farming-adjacent folks) today grappling with how to be in right relationship with the lands we live in.
*This event is open to all those who identify as Jewish (and their loved ones), including those who might not feel 'Jewish enough'. We know this can be complicated - please do get in touch if you want to check in about this!
Location: Oxford, TBC
Timings: 6:30 - 10pm
This event will be hosted by Miknaf Ha'aretz and supported by the Jewish Farmer Network.
Miknaf Ha'aretz organises to heal, repair and reimagine Jewish belonging & connection to land beyond nationalism and zionism. We cultivate earth-based, radical, diasporist jewish community in the UK through immersive courses, retreats & events exploring nature-connection, food & land justice & regenerative farming. We insist on uplifting Jewish safety, belonging and re-connection to land through a politics of solidarity and collective liberation.
Our mission at Jewish Farmer Network is to cultivate the social, cultural and spiritual well-being of Jewish farmers. Jewish Farmer Network nurtures a vibrant community among thousands of Jewish farmers by exploring and celebrating our Jewish agricultural heritage and wisdom.
Choosing Life: Yom Kippur with Miknaf Ha'aretz & Yelala
11th-13th October Hazel Hill Woods, Salisbury, Wiltshire
“The book of life and the book of death are one book. The opposite of life is not death. The opposite of life is Empire.” - Kohenet Val Schlosberg
On Yom Kippur we enter a powerful portal where we offer a collective prayer for life. This prayer has never been more urgent. We invite you to join us on retreat in the woods for Yom Kippur 5785 to drop in deeper to this powerful moment in time, to incubate our prayers for the year ahead & to honour the beloved dead at our backs in soul-ful, song-ful community & nature-connected contemplation.
This will be a creative, embodied, experiential take on the traditional High Holy Day liturgy and practice grounded in the Kohenet tradition. Services will be held by Kohenet Rachel Rose Reid, Kohenet Sara Moon, Samson Hart & others TBC. There will be prayer time and more structured learning sessions alongside much space to wander, reflect, meditate, sing and be in silence!
Rosh Hashanah with Miknaf Ha’aretz
Welcoming the new year in soulful, earth-based, radical-diasporist Jewish community
Thursday 3rd October (1st Day Rosh Hashanah) 10am - 5pm Sadeh Farm, Skeet Hill House, Kent
We will be welcoming the new year together in song & prayer on the land, honouring the joys & griefs of the year just gone and casting a collective spell for a more beautiful, just, liberated year ahead.
This will be a creative, embodied, experiential take on the traditional High Holy Day liturgy and practice grounded in the Kohenet tradition. Services and learning sessions will be held by Kohenet Sara Moon, Yael Roberts, Samson Hart & more TBC
Camp Beenu 2024
Camp Beenu is a new Jewish youth movement in the UK cultivating nature-connected, diasporic Jewish identity rooted in justice and solidarity. Building on the success of our first two camps we are back this summer for our 3rd year!
Radical Farm Camp 2024
Radical Farm Camp is back! Join us again this summer for a 5 day immersion in ‘Radical Jewish Farming’ where we will get our hands in the soil, cook delicious farm to table feasts, learn about jewish land justice & build community on the land.
We will learn practical organic food growing skills through hands on experience in a working market garden. We will trace Jewish histories of food and farming, engaging in ancestral practices of growing and preparing food, cooking together and enjoying delicious farm to table feasts. We will explore the Torah of a Jewish land justice & the radical potentials of soil as solidarity and how we might get involved in land justice struggles in the UK today. We will wake early to pray & sing in community, We will experience a proper ‘Farmer’s Shabbat’, resting together at the culmination of our retreat. We will build kindred & supportive community.
Palestine Food Stories
An educational fundraiser in support of Mashjar Juthor.
Join Miknaf Ha’aretz & The Kitchen Table to welcome and learn from Palestine-based urban farmer and food activist Morgan Cooper who will be sharing from her experiences of food and land justice struggles under military occupation.
We will be raising funds for Mashjar Juthor, for conservation, planting and caring for trees in occupied Palestine and educational work around Palestinian agricultural and culinary heritage in the face of land theft and cultural erasure.
As foodies, farmers & activists in the land and food justice movement in the UK, it feels imperitive to connect with and build solidarity with farmers and land-workers in occupied Palestine facing immense threats to their livelihoods and existence. We are so honoured to welcome Morgan and her family to Devon and to learn more how we can support Palestinian liberation and Palestinian food & farming heritage as it is being lost through decades of disposession from land and militarized control with what remains.
We warmly invite you to join us for these two very special events to learn and be together, uplifting Palestinian life through food culture and celebration of Palestine's rich agricultural & culinary heritage.
The Living Mountain: A Radical Jewish Nature-Connection Retreat
Our lineage is suffused with wild tales. Our ancestors knew themselves as kin to the breathing earth & the rhythms of jewish time supported deep connection to the earth. But empire & dispossession has uprooted us from our lineages as a land-based people. How do we reconnect with this birthright? How do we cultivate ecological belonging in ways that affirm our jewishness & reject nationalism? How to retrieve & re-imagine jewish ways of liberated connection to land?
This offering will explore radical nature-connection through a Jewish lens, learning from some of the most inspiring and renowned nature-connection facilitators & educators from the Jewish world and beyond, exploring tracking, bird-language, land justice & the ecologies of doykeit/hereness. This training will take place deep in the mountains of Wales with a ceremonial nature-vigil at the culmination of our retreat to prepare us for Shavuot.
Meeting the Dart
"Said the river: imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going." - Mary Oliver
What does the river have to teach us? And if we don’t get in, how can we possibly find out?
Join us for a very special day on the River Dart, in deep connection & conversation with the ecologies of this watershed, by canoeing their sacred waters, immersing in them & walking their banks. We will meet this River and the creatures and beings who live in and amongst it, as kin, listening to the pull of the tides, the flow of the weathers and the story the river wants to tell. We do not yet know what this story might be and where the river might take us but we do know its mysteries will be magnificent and we will all be changed by our meeting.
The Land Justice Sessions with Miknaf Ha'aretz & Friends
What is ‘land justice’ & how might it offer a revolutionary re-imagining of our world?
Like the mycelial networks that weave between, beyond, through, with and around us, issues of land justice intersect and inter-weave with all other issues for ecological and social justice.
In our latest virtual series, we want to examine these tendrils of connection, exploring the entwinement between our struggles and solidarities with peoples across the world and across time. We will explore the abolitionist roots of land justice, Palestinian liberation, the Kurdish struggle, revolutionary shepherding and its link with migrant justice, & how the Right to Roam movement & wider UK land justice movement are bringing about this vision in the UK and re-imagining the commons as a treasury for all.
The Wild Jewish Year 2023 (In-person)
We are beyond excited to share details about our upcoming in-person programming for ‘The Wild Jewish Year’.
We will be gathering across Britain’s wild places, from the River Dart, to the Wye Valley to deep South Devon. We will drink in the Torah of the lands and the waters, sing by the fire under starry skies, learning from each other & the lands we are on through radical nature-connection practices, earth-based Jewish spirituality, regenerative agriculture, re-wilding and land justice.
Each offering will be unique in content and context with different access considerations. You are welcome to apply for all programs or individual ones, they are stand-alone.
Riverlation: Receiving the Torah of the River Dart
Thursday 25th May 2pm - Saturday 27th May 2pm
River Dart, Devon - Meeting at Point Field Campsite, Sharpham (10 mins taxi from Totnes station, or 1-2 hour walk along the River!)
The Torah was revealed on a mountaintop in deep wilderness. This wilderness is still speaking, still revealing the Majesties of Mystery.
Are we listening?
Join us this Shavuot as we receive the Torah of the River Dart. Spending our days in deep connection & conversation with the ecologies of this watershed, by canoeing their sacred waters, mikveh-ing (ritually immersing) in them, camping at their sides & walking their banks.
We will meet this River and the creatures and beings who live in and amongst it, as kin. We will meet each other as kin, finding our ways back to our place in the wild web of things, honouring this ancient festival of revelation by listening deeply to the wilds within and around us, listening for what wants to be revealed in this time.
We will listen to the pull of the tides, the flow of the weathers and follow the story the river wants to tell. We do not yet know what this story might be* and where the river might take us but we do know its mysteries will be magnificent and we will all be changed by our meeting.
We can't wait to journey with you!
Application close on Sunday 23rd April! Places are limited and we will confirm yours as soon as possible, but please do not book travel until we have...
*We will also be supported by experienced local river guides!
Price : £150 / £200 / £250. This price includes canoe hire & guide, all meals during the retreat, programming costs, camp site, cook & camp-site holder. We are trying to keep costs as low as possible - we really encourage you to pay as much as you can afford. We are also trying to raise some funding for bursary places for those who don't have the means, if you are able to offer an additional donation to support this retreat, please let us know below! Equally, if you need additional financial support in order for you to attend, please indicate below.
Access needs: This experience involves canoeing, camping under the stars in a basic campsite setting and some walking along the river. We would love to support your access needs at this event, where possible. Please get in touch to check in about this.
*POSTPONED* Aly Hapert (Virtual Gig)
We're so excited to announce our upcoming Virtual Gig with Aly Halpert (@alhalpal), an evening of live music for healing and collective liberation, happening on Zoom on Thursday 30th March, 19:30 - 21:00 GMT (14:30 - 16:00 ET / 11:30 - 13:00 PT).
The Wild Jewish Year 2023-4 (Virtual Journey)
We will journey together through the Jewish year, cycling through ancient earth-based Jewish ritual & practice & exploring the wisdom connected to each of the Jewish months, as they meet the lands we are currently living on. Through poetry, song, wild-craft, foraging, food-growing & medicine-making, we will ground deeper in the places we call home, enriching our knowings of the sacred cycles of Jewish time while cultivating deeper intimacy with the lands we are on. Our enquiry will be grounded in deepening connection to the particular bio-regions we live in, as a diasporist practice, a practice of hereness. And, for us, this must include honouring our multi-rooted heritage & identity & making space for that in the places we are.
The Diaspora Sessions
“Diasporism takes root in the Jewish Socialist Labor Bund’s principle of doikayt—hereness—the right to be, and to fight for justice, wherever we are… Hereness demands that we learn our local histories and resurrect hidden ones of our own. Hereness means we refuse to disappear into the interiority of our liturgy, and equally refuse to stop being Jews in public. Hereness forces us to consider critically our relationship with class and its ordering of our world. Hereness is weird and materialist and queer and fun and angry, and best of all it’s already happening.” - Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz
Tracing a journey through ancient Jewish texts & histories through to contemporary co-liberation struggles, these sessions will delve into this hereness and explore the possibilities of a Jewish identity beyond nationalism & assimilation. We want to explore what it means to affirm & embrace a belonging and connection to the lands we are on now, cultivating a Jewish identity that is both multi-rooted & committed to cross-diasporic solidarity.
Singing in the Dark: A Miknaf Chanukah Fundraiser
Here we are, in the dark times, edging towards the longest night of the year, a quarter of the way through Kislev, the Hebrew month of dreams. Kislev's Torah is about what can be revealed from the murkey depths - dreams for instance, the extraordinary brilliance of funghi.... The dark a blanket and an invitation, allowing us to dream deeper, to incubate, to rest. And of course to gather with loved ones and to sing round fire and candlelight.
Well, we have an invitation for you... On the 22nd December, on the fifth night of Chanukah, we will be gathering community close for a virtual night of song and story. We will be joined by some very special guests from across these isles, including renowned storyteller Kohenet Rachel Rose Reid, wonderful Klezmer musicians Ruth Nicholson and Maya & Benjamin Brown, Yiddishist and rising Kohenet Annie Cohen, Yiddish singer and song collector Rachel Weston, and more TBC!
Hakhel: Sukkot Retreat
The end of the Shmita year is upon us. What do we take from this ancient rest year into the next Shmita cycle? How might be celebrate Sukkot through a lense of wise Torah, deep nature-connection, and radical-diasporism?
