Authentic Encounters With Jewish Sacred Heritage
Poet-educator Alexander Nemser and musician-educator Eliana Light offer creative, multi-dimensional group experiences tailored to your community.
Like the breath itself, prayer is a sacred bridge: between inner and outer, self and Other, hidden and revealed. It arises in the intimate connection between the glorious, messy unfolding of human life, and the transpersonal mystery of the Divine.
And yet, many of us struggle with a sense of loss and disconnection when it comes to giving voice to our deepest spiritual Being.
Our generation is yearning to come home to our tradition, to return to or re-embrace its meaning and depth from within the authentic experience of our own lives. We long to recover the devotional jewels of our lineage, holding them to the light to reveal their multiple facets.
Combining our unique skills and experiences as facilitators, seekers, and creatives, we offer 90-min workshops, either one-off or in series, that invite this very homecoming, and simultaneously locate it in a global return to wholeness and interconnection.
The unique methodology we use in Real Talk with the Universe provides a potent tool to explore Jewish sacred heritage that both universalizes its themes and connects it to our tradition, weaving today’s challenge with timeless spiritual questions.
Working with the unique needs of your community, we create programs that engage the brain, stimulate the senses, and touch the heart.
Our Modalities Include:
Song-leadership/Niggunim
Text study/Chevruta
Poetry
Guided meditation and visualization
Free writing
Storytelling
Group discussion
Our offerings are:
Expansive
Our programs draw from a vast variety of spiritual and literary streams, from contemporary poetry in a diverse range of voices, to Zen koans, to indigenous ways of knowing the natural world. We believe a broad and open-armed engagement with wisdom traditions outside our own is the truest response to finding ourselves in a moment of unprecedented interconnectedness, giving Judaism a chance both to encounter and to be enriched by the fabric of innate human spirituality of which it is a part.
Authentic
Real Talk with the Universe programs are an inclusive space for the kaleidoscopic range of vulnerabilities that modern life confronts us with. Participants are encouraged to go deep and draw upon what is actually going on with them—finances, relationships, mental health, planetary well-being—in a safe, healing and non-judgmental space. When we do not split off the unsung suffering and small joys of our daily lives from our spirituality, we find opportunities for integration arise: the tradition has a chance to speak to our lives, and our lives to teach and expand the tradition.
Flexible
Because each of our offerings is tailored to a specific occasion, audience, and moment in time, we have the ability to fine-tune the content and approach to suit the needs and priorities of your community. Whether you want to zero-in on the deep resonance of a particular holiday, give voice to the inner lives of your members through creativity, or explore a contemporary issue through the lens of text, song and contemplation, our modules can be seamlessly recombined and reinvented to offer the right container for the experience.
“Eliana and Alexander make a great team in Real Talk with the Universe. Guiding our diverse group of seekers through deep text study, journaling, meditation, and song, they beautifully raised up the soul of our siddur and created the space for our souls to connect with it and each other.”
“I really enjoyed Eliana and Alexander’s Dayenu workshop. The online gathering was intimate and relaxed. It had a nice, easy flow to it; not too long, not too short. Eliana and Alexander are great at cultivating community. The people who showed up were wonderfully open hearted and intelligent. The conversation that unfolded was illuminating and profound, and I seem to remember a lot of laughter (which is much appreciated these days.) As a non-Jewish person, I felt very welcome in this space. I highly recommend their workshops, and I can’t wait to attend more.”
“This class was such a beautiful, heart opening experience. Alexander and Eliana created a nurturing space for exploring new pathways into prayer, meaning, and wonder. So grateful to have been welcomed in!”
Eliana Light
Alexander Nemser
Alexander Nemser is a poet, writer, and facilitator based in Los Angeles. His work has been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, and The Paris Review. His book The Sacrifice of Abraham was named among the “Best Jewish Poetry of 2014” by The Forward. He has offered workshops at Limmud UK, the Conference for American Jewish Museums, Lab/Shul, and many other Jewish institutions. He is currently studying in the Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program with Jack Kornfield and Tara Brach.
Eliana Light envisions a joyful, vibrant, heart-centered Judaism that speaks to the soul and moves the spirit, reminding us that we all are One. Eliana has taught at the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial, the Rabbinical Assembly convention, the NewCAJE Jewish Education Conference, Limmud New York, Limmud UK, Songleader Boot Camp, Hava Nashira, Hebrew Union College, and the Jewish Theological Seminary, and was named to the Jewish Week’s 36 under 36 in 2019. Eliana received her Master’s in Jewish Education from the Davidson school at JTS in 2016, and is currently based in Durham, North Carolina.
Sample Real Talk with the Universe Program:
Prayer Workshop on “Modeh Ani / Thanks”
Summary:
For this series, we’re inspired by Anne Lamott’s formulation of the three essential prayers: “Thanks. Help. Wow.” Each workshop will focus on one of these core ideas, beginning with how the Jewish tradition has expressed it, and leading into space for us to explore and give voice to the prayers in our own hearts.
4-4:03 Eliana is singing “Modeh Ani” as we enter the waiting room
Words to the prayer are shared
4:03-4:10 Alexander opens the sacred space and asks each person to bring an intention/ or shares intention
4:10-4:15 Eliana and then Alexander share why they decided to do this, explain the help thanks wow, what need this is filling, etc.
4:15-4:25 Eliana sends people into chevruta with a handout with various translations of “Modeh Ani” and guiding questions. Eliana gives 8-10 minutes
4:25-4:30 Eliana gives some background on the prayer and its historical context
4:30-4:33 Alexander leads a visualization in “encountering” the prayer. Picture in your mind’s eye where you think the soul goes, or buy the author Rabbi Moshe ben Machir a cup of coffee and ask him why he wrote the prayer
4:33-4:45 Alexander gives 10-12 minutes to write, rings a meditation bell at the beginning and end. We will have time to debrief later
4:45-4:58 Alexander shares poem “Slant” by Suji Kwock Kim, as well as language from other traditions. Alexander sets up what we can encounter while writing our own prayer of thanks
4:58-5:13 Alexander brings people in and out of the writing period
5:13-5:25 Debrief in the group
5:25 Eliana and Alexander each close with a spontaneous prayer of thanksgiving
5:29 Close with niggun of the same “Modeh Ani” melody