The Light Lab Podcast
We (Rabbi Josh Warshawsky, Cantor Ellen Dreskin, Eliana Light, and special guests) believe that there is so much insight to be found in Jewish sacred heritage by holding the gems of our liturgy to the light. We see the immense value of personal, heart-opening, empathy-expanding prayer practice. And we love to talk about both!
Episode 61: Turning Sorrows into Songs (with Rabbi Ilan Glazer)
This week, we are honored to bring your our interview with Eliana and Rabbi Ilan Glazer. Rabbi Ilan is the founder of Our Jewish Recovery, author of the award-winning And God Created Recovery: Jewish Wisdom to Help You Break Free From Your Addiction, Heal Your Wounds, and Unleash Your Inner Freedom, and a Shatterproof Ambassador and Family Program Instructor. We explore the medicine of incorporating new and ancient melodies into t’fillah, how Jewish wisdom addresses addiction and recovery, and grounding grief in song. Plus, we listen to a few tracks on Rabbi Ilan’s new album, Gam Ki Elech: Turning Our Sorrows Into Songs.
How has Jewish wisdom shown up for you in moments of pain and darkness?
Episode 60: Open-Source Judaism (with Aharon Varady)
This week, we are delighted to bring you our interview with Eliana and Aharon Varady. Aharon is the founding director and primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project. We explore the alchemy of a minyan, taking responsibility for your prayer, and how to make a container to cross-pollinate our own liturgical wisdom with other people.
What prompts from our ancestors resonate with you in reading a siddur?
Episode 59: Praying with One Kahal (with Batya Levine)
This week, we are ecstatic to bring you our interview with Eliana and Batya Levine. Batya (they/them) is a communal song leader, musician, shaliach tzibur (Jewish prayer leader), cultural organizer, and co-founder and the Director of Programs at Let My People Sing! We explore adversarial relationships with t’fillah, modeling pouring-out-your-heart davening, and how to nurture the song leader in you.
When have you been most vulnerable in sharing your voice?
Episode 57: Nerding out on T’fillah (with Rabbi Josh Cahan)
This week, we are delighted to bring you our interview with Eliana and Rabbi Josh Cahan. A t’filah educator in New York City, Josh compiled and edited the Yedid Nefesh bencher and is introducing the new Yedid Nefesh Haggadah this Spring. We explore the origin story of a t’fillah nerd, praying at sleepaway camp, and the challenges and opportunities of teaching t’fillah to kids.
Is there a t’fillah nerd in your life who has inspired you as a pray-er?
Episode 55: The Origins of Liturgy (with Rabbi Ruth Langer, Ph.D)
This week, we are proud to bring you our interview with Eliana and rabbi, doctor, and professor, Ruth Langer. Langer is a liturgy scholar and director of graduate studies at Boston College’s Theology Department. We explore how liturgical change gets squashed, how the Talmud set the course for future liturgical halacha, and how prayers emerged throughout history.
What is the value of knowing liturgical history to the pray-er?
Episode 51: Under the Torah and Dreaming (with Rabbi Jill Hammer)
This week, we are privileged to bring you our interview with Eliana and Rabbi Kohenet Jill Hammer, PhD. Hammer is an author, teacher, midrashist, mystic, poet, essayist, and priestess. We explore where to look for g?d, how to call on g?d, and the venn diagram of poetry and liturgy. Plus, we dive into Hammer’s new book, Undertorah!
How can dreams impact our liturgical selves?
Episode 47: Shock-arit (with Billy Jonas)
This week, we are elated to bring you our interview with Billy Jonas. For over thirty years, Billy Jonas - performer, singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist, educator, and playful pray-er extraordinaire - has perfected the art of the neo-tribal hootenanny with audiences around the globe. Using voice, guitar, and industrial re-percussion, each of his concerts is a soul-spelunking, heart-healing, joy-filled journey. We explore using curtains as an invitation to prayer, how to engage the very narrow bridge between the left and right brain in prayer, and when we first considered the benediction of a bird’s song and the rustling of leaves as prayer.
Were you also absent at Hebrew School the day they taught the similarities between Judaism and other ancient earth-based matrixes?
Episode 46: Comfort and Courage (with Rabbi Sarit Horwitz)
It was wonderful to be live on zoom with Rabbi Sarit and Beth Sholom! We’d love to do a live episode with your community- contact us at welcome@lightlab.co to learn more.
This week, we are elated to bring you our interview with Rabbi Sarit Horwitz, the rockstar clergy at Beth Shalom Synagogue in Memphis, TN. We explore creating opportunities for deep experiences in our communities, vulnerability in being a leader and pray-er, and that T’fillah is not meant to be a spectator sport.
Did you learn your prayers before you learned how to pray?
Episode 44: g?d is Here (with Rabbi Toba Spitzer)
This week we’re grateful to bring you Ellen and Eliana’s conversation with Rabbi Toba Spitzer, author of the book “God is Here: Reimagining the Divine.” Rabbi Spitzer takes us on a journey that includes Jewish liberation theology, playing dead (as in the grateful dead), liturgical gymnastics, and the three kinds of metaphors. Rabbi Spitzer’s work has been hugely influential to our thinking around g?d-language and we were geeking out the whole time. We hope you enjoy our interview (and hope you buy her book!)
How can g?d-metaphors influence and enhance our experiences of the Divine?
Episode 41: Joyous Justice (with April N. Baskin)
This week, we are honored to bring you our interview with organizer, coach, and leader April N. Baskin. April is the founder and CEO of Joyous Justice, a “multiracial community-powered social justice and spiritual transformation organization that seeds and leads systemic change and healing.” We explore the intersection of justice work and spirituality, her path to becoming a Kohenet, and the work of “coming home.”
How do you access spiritual sustenance?
Episode 40: Co-Shepherding (live at Temple Isaiah Lexington with Cantor Lisa Doob and Rabbi Darryl Crystal)
It’s our first in person live episode! Join us at Temple Isaiah in Lexington MA as Eliana interviews Cantor Lisa Doob and Rabbi Daryl Crystal. We explore their respective spiritual journeys, what prayer means to them now, and their unique roles; Cantor Doob has been at Temple Isaiah many years, while Rabbi Crystal has served 17 congregations in 19 years as an interim Rabbi.
When we lead t’fillah, who do we become?
Episode 38: Words from my Heart (with Evelyn Goldfinger)
We’re so honored this week to be joined by educator extraordinaire Evelyn Goldfinger! Evelyn is a spiritual leader, performer, storyteller, and author, most recently of “Words from my Heart,” a hands-on prayer book for kids. In addition to sharing insights into her incredible new book, Ms. Eve also delivers her t’fillah journey in four acts, explores how prayer and theater are connected, and sings a sweet prayer song for healing in Hebrew, English, and Spanish. She also spontaneously prays for the internet to come back in the most beautiful way!
How might you share the words from your heart?
Episode 36: The Poetry of Prayer with Rabbi Reuven Kimelman
We are thrilled to bring you this interview with renowned liturgist Rabbi Reuven Kimelman. Rabbi Kimelman is an expert in the themes, structure, and poetics of the Jewish prayerbook, and shares enough wisdom to blow Eliana’s mind multiple times. Topics include t’fillah as an aural experience, the multi-mystical levels of Lecha Dodi, the power and point of the mourner’s kaddish, and so much more.
Announcing the Deep Dive: Shema! Join us for six gatherings over three weeks diving into the three units of this central piece of liturgy with our heads and our hearts. Taught by Rabbi Reuven Kimelman and Light Lab founder Eliana Light.
Episode 34: Song and the Human Story with Marni Loffman
We are thrilled to share this interview with educator, songstress, and space-holder extraordinaire Marni Loffman. Marni connects to thousands over social media with their soulful voice and warm presence, both of which they bring to our conversation (stay through the end for a spiritual song practice!) Through sharing their journey with prayer, liturgy, and g?d, Marni makes space for us to hold multiplicity, curiosity, awareness, wholeness, and healing.
How can we connect to the human experience inherent in liturgy?
How can we add our voice to this everlasting story?
Episode 28: Excavating the Secrets (with Rabbi Deborah Sacks Mintz)
We are thrilled to be joined this week by Rabbi Deborah Sacks Mintz, Director of Music and T’fillah at the Hadar Institute. Deborah is an acclaimed teacher, leader, and composer of prayer, and has collaborated on over two dozen albums of original Jewish music. Her beautiful debut album “The Narrow and the Expanse” was released in 2020. In our interview, Deborah reflects on her t’fillah journey (including her years studying ethnomusicology), the prayer leader's toolbox, and her work guiding communities. There are so many gems to excavate!
Episode 27: Finding Our Way Home (Amidah Middle Blessings 7&8)
This week continues our journey through the weekday Amidah with the middle blessings on “in-gathering” and “justice.” It’s a full bingo board- multiple translations, scrambling to find intertext, mentions of Shai Held and musical theater, and of course, exploring what these blessings might mean for each of us.
What is home to you?
Episode 26: Diary of the Jewish People (with Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD)
We are so honored to share this conversation between Eliana, Ellen, and Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD. Rabbi Hoffman, (or “Larry” as good friends like Ellen call him) is one of the foremost liturgists and t’fillah teachers of our day. He has written and edited dozens of books on the subject, including the series “My People’s Prayerbook” which we reference for this podcast constantly! Rabbi Hoffman regales us with tales of his childhood, how camp transformed him and the Jewish world, siddur as identity-marker, and what he sees for the future. Plus before the interview, Eliana shares some thoughts on t’fillah in dark times.
Episode 25: Tree Time (Amidah Middle Blessing 6) (with Hazzan Jessi Roemer)
It’s time to talk about time. And trees! We’re back in the flow of the weekday Amidah, exploring the sixth of the middle petitionary blessings. We get into the connection between time and land, being “farmer-adjacent,” giving the earth a voice, and the shmita year of land-rest. Plus, an interview with Hazzan Jessi Roemer about t’fillah, shmita, and her beautiful song “Seij Años.”
Episode 24: Chronic Congregation (with Rabbi Emily Aronson)
How can we make our spiritual communities accessible both spatially and theologically? This is the question that animates Rabbi Emily Aronson, founder of Chronic Congregation. In our interview, Rabbi Aronson gives us so much to think about, including: disability theology, the power of the prayer for healing, and building a better sanctuary. Plus, she shares an original prayer with us, one of many she has written for everyday moments of comfort, rage, and community.
How can we put the promise of collective care into practice?
Episode 16: Activating Shechina (with Rishe Groner)
What a joy to interview (spi)ritualist, writer, educator, and friend Rishe Groner of the Gene-Sis. A channel of ecstatic & embodied Jewish practice, Rishe lives and breathes prayer- so much so that she has an incredible prayer podcast of her own, Just Pray. We talk about this new project, plus her childhood in a Chabad family in Melbourne Australia, walking in prayer, the keva-kavanah (fixed liturgy-intention) tension, and exploring t’fillah with kids. Plus even more beautiful bits of wisdom. May this blessed back-and-forth activate Divine presence in your day!