Taproot Gathering
Find out more about Taproot and apply to our 2018 Gathering!
It gave me so much. So much more than I expected. New friends, new teachers, new ways to approach familiar questions, a place to recharge and reinvigorate Jewish practice. Before Taproot, I was honestly thinking of ‘walking away’ from Judaism. Disillusioned. Uninspired. Stale. But our week together reminded me how nourishing it is for me to connect with Jewish teachings. How important it is for me to stay engaged. To honor the ancestors in ways that are fresh, alive and authentic.
—2017 Participant
The Taproot Gathering is an immersive week of Jewish study, embodied practice, ritual, and heartful discussion designed for activists, artists, and changemakers who wish to tap into their Jewish background as a source of resonance, sustenance, and grounding. Taproot is a place for experimentation and for exploring the emerging fabric of our intergenerational Jewish learning community, facilitated by a collaborative team of Rabbis and young changemakers.
Each 5-day retreat engages text study, movement, music and more to create a sacred learning experience for participants to dip into and emerge refreshed, nourished, and supported.
The Gathering is organized around daily themes. Each theme involves inquiry arising from text, drawn from Torah, Talmud, or mystical/Chassidic sources, presented primarily in English. Each theme is also explored through music, movement, meditation, or other modalities to coax the day’s learnings out of the head and into the body and heart.
Now in its second year, the Taproot Gathering will offer opportunities for participants to instigate conversations on issues of spirituality, activism, intersectionality, or anything else that is pressing in this moment. Participants are also invited to offer their own expertise to the group in both planned and spontaneous ways.
The high point of the Taproot Gathering is Shabbat at Commonweal. Welcoming Shabbat with joy and song; deepening into it through intimate (joyous, challenging) engagement with Torah, and holding with mindfulness and gratitude the experience of the waning Shabbat light on the bluffs of Bolinas.
The stewards of this program are Adam Horowitz (US Department of Arts and Culture), David Bronstein (Alt*Div), Rachel Plattus (Beautiful Solutions), Rabbi Diane Elliot (whollypresent.org), Reb Irwin Keller (irwinkeller.com) and Rabbi and Magid Eli Herb (Temple Beth Shalom, Salem, OR).