Shows
Connecting with Coincidence 2.0 with Bernard Beitman, MDThe Universe Will Provide Answers If You Ask | Rabbi Irwin Keller, EP 394Are your dreams just dreams—or are they messages from something greater? In this moving and thought-provoking conversation, Rabbi Irwin Keller shares how dreams, synchronicity, and ancestral memory opened doors he never imagined. From a recurring dream that led him to his family’s hidden past, to signs that feel too perfect to ignore, this episode invites you to reimagine what’s possible when we learn to listen.Through deep spiritual insight, Jewish mysticism, and poetic storytelling, Rabbi Keller explores how asking the right question can unlock invisible guidance—and how we all might be part of a greater collecti...2025-03-311h 00
Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life2024:12.10: Rabbi Irwin Keller - Words, Worry, WonderToday I am taking sides.
I am taking the side of Peace.
Peace, which I will not abandon
even when its voice is drowned out
by hurt and hatred,
bitterness of loss,
cries of right and wrong.
I am taking the side of Peace
whose name has barely been spoken
in this winnerless war…..
From Irwin Keller’s viral protest poem, “Taking Sides,” published in his recent volume of essays, memoir, and poetry: entitled Shechinah at the Art Institute: Words, Worry, Wonder.
Join Host Michael Lerner for another conversation with New School friend and sometimes-host Rabbi Irwin Keller. A former lawyer a...2025-01-111h 25
Winning IRS4E09: Zane Keller from Affirm on The Investor's Perspective: Leveraging Buy-Side Experience in Investor RelationsAbout the EpisodeIn this episode of Winning IR, Mark Fasken sits down with Zane Keller, Head of Investor Relations at Affirm, to discuss how his decade-long experience as a buy-side investor in global financial services companies has shaped his approach to IR. Zane shares how his understanding of investor priorities has influenced his strategies for effective communication and engagement with the investment community. Listen to the full episode to learn more about:Zane's career journey from the buy-side to leading investor relations at AffirmThe typical decision-making process on the buy-side and where IR...2024-11-1233 min
From Sparks to Light - Inspiring Stories for Challenging TimesThe Search for Connection - Rabbi Irwin Keller“There’s a longing that runs through our species. People are so hungry for belonging and recognition.”Irwin Keller was in third grade when he knew he wanted to be a rabbi, but it would be many years before he would heed his calling. Along the way he became a lawyer and gay rights advocate and a marginally famous singing drag queen for 21 years with America's Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, the Kinsey Sicks.With war raging in the middle east and a fractured world around us, we talk about the de...2024-10-241h 10
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerHoly Sand (Audio Podcast)
Spending a month alone in Worms was an unresearched, romantic idea. It wasn't what I was looking for. But maybe it was what I needed.
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2024-08-2400 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerIn Dew Season (Audio Podcast)
In this moment of crisis, we need to let things arise and evaporate, leaving us unburdened enough to do the work of peace. Dew Season can suggest how.
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2024-05-0400 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerAndes Mountain High (Audio Podcast)
On a trek to 15,000 feet, my greatest companion was Psalm 121. (The other companions were pretty amazing too.) A report-back on a struggle, a summit, and a psalm.
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2024-04-2000 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerBecoming Amalek (Audio Podcast)
There is a dark side to Purim – Jewish self-defense gone out of control. How do we keep from becoming Amalek in responding to those we've labeled Amalek? What if Amalek is not outside us but in us? What do we need to do to begin to wipe it out beyond memory? Press play below for audio (and sorry about the loud rain on the roof).
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2024-03-2300 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerWill and Skill (Audio Podcast)
A vision isn't moot just because there isn't currently the will and skill to carry it off. There will be. A drash on Parashat Pekudei, plus a musical setting of Vihi Noam. (And an extra opening story in this audio version.)
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2024-03-1600 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerReport Back from Israel, and the Parable of the Toyota In The Gulley (Audio Podcast)
How is it that we can listen to a voice in our ear, directing us on paths that we know will lead to disaster, and still not question? Two weeks in Israel: war, rain, sorrow, and a GPS disaster.
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2024-02-1700 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerCome-to-Pharaoh Moment (Audio Podcast)
The war in Israel and Gaza has, I notice, offered to Supporters of Israel and Supporters of Palestine proof of what they already believed. And our city councils have become the proxy battleground. Righteousness is easy. Blame is easy. But empathy is hard and will break us open. If we can't manage some empathy here, what hope is there for reconciliation in the land we all love? This is a Come-to-Pharaoh Moment.
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2024-01-2000 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Trickiness of the Collective (Audio Podcast)
Nations have a life of their own, behaving in ways few individuals would. Maybe remembering the angel of the collective can bring out our best.
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2024-01-0600 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerGathered to our People (Audio Podcast)
Today is ten years since my mother’s death, and the haunting is sweet. She is gathered into me like Jacob was gathered into his people. The ancestors are in us. We are ancestors too. What traits and traumas, what hope or despair, openness of heart or resilience of spirit, will be gathered from us into those who come after?Audio below.
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2023-12-3000 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerSea of Tears (Audio Podcast)
The truth is I no longer even know what I’m crying about. At this point, I seem just to be yielding to the big blur of suffering.
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2023-12-0200 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerRely on Compassion (Audio Podcast)
I am walking around afraid. Not always afraid of something specific. My body is fueled by adrenaline and programmed by the epigenetics of generations of ancestors whose fear responses enabled their survival and mine. My soul has fluttered right out of my body. Is there any solid place where it can land?
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The audio opens with the chant “My Protection” by Rabbi Shefa Gold, sung here by Ner Shalom Chantleader Atzilah Solot.2023-11-1100 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerDeath of Moses; the Exhale After (Audio Podcast)
At the end of Torah, Moshe dies, after much struggle and resistance. Torah seems to take a breath, a long exhale, as we roll back the scroll to the beginning. And so in our lives as well, the exhale after the long-anticipated death of anyone we love. The gasp, the exhale.
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2023-10-0700 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerIsrael, Anatevka, and the Jewish Soul (Audio Podcast)
For Yom Kippur, I explore what it is in our American Jewish soul – the longing, the fear, and the insecurity – that keeps us silent when Israel (and Palestine) are under discussion. Now is the time to find our voice.
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2023-09-2500 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerMade of Ancient Light (Audio Podcast)
The Lurianic story says that Creation came about through a shattering of light-filled vessels. The primordial light is embedded in all of us. And our bodies and our separateness are all a kind of mask over an ancient, light-filled Oneness. How can we use that mystical insight?
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2023-09-2000 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerClimb Up and Look (Audio Podcast)
Moshe is denied entry to the Promised Land. But he is invited to climb the mountain and look to the horizon and see what no one else can.
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2023-07-2900 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerAh, the Narrows (Audio Podcast)
We are in the narrows now. Is that such a bad thing?A drash reconsidering the Beyn Hametzarim – the three narrow weeks leading to Tisha B'Av.
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2023-07-0800 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerJerusalem Day (Audio Podcast)
Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day – celebrates the reunification of the City. But it feels anything but unified. It can only be honored as a vision, but a vision in need of revision.
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2023-05-2000 min
Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life2023:03.15 - Bill Glenn - I Came Here Seeking a Person with Host Irwin KellerIn his newly published spiritual memoir, I Came Here Seeking a Person, Bill Glenn shares the joys and the traumas of growing up gay and Catholic in the 1950s and 60s. A one-time Jesuit seminarian, he explores the longing for and the obstacles to living a life of faith, service, and wholeness in today’s world. He also explores the impact of being a newly out gay man in the terrible opening years of the AIDS epidemic, and what the aftereffects of those experiences have been. The memoir is an ode to love, joy, and faith, and to living fully am...2023-04-111h 26
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerMother of Months (Audio Podcast)
The month ahead – the month of Nisan, which begins Wednesday night – is not only the first month of the Hebrew calendar, it also contains all the subsequent months within it as if in utero. It is the Shekhinah, the Divine Mother, birthing time. What do we want to birth in this next year?
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2023-03-1800 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Weight of Money (Audio Podcast)
Money is power. And the more money you have, the greater your power to do good and the greater your power to do evil. In the Purim story, the Queen Esther story, Haman uses arguments about Jewish disloyalty to convince the king to order the destruction of the Jews. But to clinch the deal, he offers to fund the operation himself. He offers 10,000 talents of silver for the king’s treasury if the king will issue the edict. Haman doesn’t just dream up the destruction of the Jews, Haman buys the destruction of the Jews. How are we ever t...2023-02-1800 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerWhen the Earth Trembles (Audio Podcast)
Just as the memory of earthquakes is wired into our bodies, so the memory of earthquakes is wired into our mythologies. Our ancestors understood earthquakes to be the very Earth trembling in God’s presence, as we ourselves certainly would. God is the physics of the earthquake and more than the physics. God is also in our pained experience of the catastrophe.
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2023-02-1100 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerSong of Refuge (Audio Podcast)
We name this not only Shabbat Shirah but Refugee Shabbat, to help us renew our compassion and empathy for the refugees who are right now lodging in tent cities and crossing great waters and wandering from place to place in search of home. We were refugees too. They are our story rewritten in the present tense.
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2023-02-0400 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerFast with Me (What if the Egyptians Had?): Audio Podcast
What if at some point the Egyptians had refused to go along with it anymore? What if they had declared a general strike? If they had gathered at the palace in protest? If they had decreed a day of fasting and crying out to their gods or to ours? Would it have made a difference to Pharaoh? Even if it didn’t, mightn’t it have made a difference to us? Introducing Interfaith Public Fast of Sonoma County.
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2023-01-2800 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerVayigash: Life Has Had Its Way (Audio Podcast)
For me, looking back over this year, what stands out most is how many individual stories in our community reached their conclusions. Looking at them, suddenly, everything shifts. A story of individual trauma and triumph gives way to a larger story of life pouring through the details of circumstance. Every act, every turn of the story, is imbued with a greater knowingness. Seeds have borne fruit. Life has had its way.
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2023-01-0100 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerIn the Light of Justice: Teshuvah and Reparations (Audio Podcast)
There is an invitation for collective teshuvah in front of us at this moment of history, being proffered by too many modern-day prophets to count, and by too many to ignore, taking the form of the movement for reparations. This critical piece of teshuvah is an invitation for the collective to develop its moral conscience, to look at how old harms continue to live with us until they are addressed, to notice how we are implicated even in histories we didn’t actively participate in.
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2022-10-0700 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerToward a Galactic Judaism (Audio Podcast)Rosh Hashanah reminds us to think beyond the human scale of our lives, and get on Cosmic terms. Is our Judaism big enough to go galactic? And what does a Cosmic consciousness require of us in the here and now?
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2022-09-2700 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerParashat Eikev: Reparations 101 (Audio Podcast)
Parashat Eikev offers another Jewish entry point to a consideration of reparations. “Beware,” Moshe says, “lest you come to think that your good fortune is of your own doing.”
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2022-08-2000 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Plain of Threading (Audio Podcast)
Shabbat Chazon 5782Where evening becomes day, light alternates with leaf, and experience becomes story.
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Featuring Min Hametzar – Psalm 118:5; Setting: Rabbi Shefa Gold.2022-08-0600 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerConditions for Prophecy (Audio Podcast)
Prophecy is not dead. But it does require the right conditions to emerge. What are the insights waiting to come from or through us? How can we make it easier to hear them?
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2022-07-2400 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Walls are Broken, But We Ain't Done Yet: Fasting as Community Protest (Audio) + New Niggun
Tisha B’Av, coming up in a few weeks, might be a cautionary tale. This is what destruction looks like. This is what it looks like when there’s nothing left to be done. But the 17th of Tammuz is a blueprint for possibility. “Do something now,” it seems to tell us. Fast. Plead. It’s not too late. It’s not over yet. A drash for 17 Tammuz.Plus a new niggun, “Niggun in the Breach” performed by the Ner Shalom Good Shabbos Band – Suzanne Shanbaum, Sheridan Gold, and Irwin Keller.
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2022-07-1600 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin Keller(Audio Podcast) A Nameless Angel and a Woman whose Name Might or Might Not Have Been Tzlelponit
A story from the Book of Judges about an angel prophesying the miraculous birth of a child, and the unnamed woman who was to be Samson's mother.
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2022-06-1100 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerSky of Iron (Profit, Guns & Leviticus) – Audio Podcast
If there is some balance between human and nature, and between human and Divine, that’s represented in the Book of Leviticus, then these terrible consequences are not a doling out of punishment, but the natural outcome of letting the delicate balance fail.We understand this now, in a new way, in this time we live in where every year we wonder if the sky will be like iron and the earth like copper.
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2022-05-2800 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerNot Torah, Not Time, Not Community (Audio Podcast)
A little about what Torah, time, and community might mean.
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2022-05-1400 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin Keller
Mid-Adar moonset, Sonoma Mountain
It is the moon, not the sun, that governs our dreams. And we needed to dream a different life, to dream a renewed self, before we could even think of putting on our sandals, packing our matzah, and taking our first step toward freedom. So now is the time we are commanded to follow the unfolding of the moons.
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2022-04-0200 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerCircumstance and Call: Two Years of Pandemic (Audio Podcast)
Every call happens in a circumstance, and every circumstance has, if we listen for it, a call. We have spent two years refining our ability to live in our conditions while responding to the Divine call arising from them. Let us not stop being prophets just because we are getting some of the goodies back. Let us not sweep the pain we feel or the revelations we’ve received under the rug of normalcy.
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2022-03-1200 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerProsper our Hands (Audio Podcast)
We are in a time of general emergency, it seems to me. A time in which we need our hands to be especially skillful. We need our hands to be busy in the work of peacemaking, tending, healing. May it be said that in our time, the hands of peacemakers were blessed. A drash for Parashat Pekudei, plus a new song – Vihi Noam.
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2022-03-0500 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe [Jewish] Gifts of Ukraine (Audio Podcast)
It is important to resist any schmaltzy Fiddler-style nostalgia for Jewish life as it was once lived in the Ukraine. But it is also right to notice how that land is imprinted on us, and how we are imprinted on it. There are not many places you can go in the world that doesn’t have some Jewish imprint. In Ukraine it is profound.
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2022-02-2600 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Priest's Armor: Protection Magic for All Who Serve (Audio Podcast)
The priest’s regalia as described in this week’s portion, is not just fancy clothes; it is protection magic. Designed to deflect, to protect, to allow the priestly service to continue despite the magnitude of what the priest processes.So I ask you: what is your protection magic?
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2022-02-1200 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerArchitecture for the Divine (Audio Podcast)
I sat in the resonating chamber of the Great Synagogue, just as I had stood at the Temple of Poseidon, and wondered about this human impulse to build a house for the gods. Why? We could go outside and worship on a mountain, or before an altar of ocean, or in the Italian countryside among colonnades of umbrella pines. But no, instead we build structures of great weight, at great expense, even though their bulging doric columns are designed to call to mind the trees just outside the door.
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2022-02-0500 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerJoseph's Bones: An Epilogue (Audio Podcast)
Joseph is not asking for the transport of their physical bones. Joseph is asking the Children of Israel – asking us – to raise up, to honor, to carry forward with us, their complex and multiple qualities. Their fullness. Their selves. And that is what we are about to do. Even if it has taken 4000 years and 7000 miles to make good on Joseph’s request.
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2021-12-2500 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Animal Instinct (Audio Podcast)
Once upon a time we were animals alongside the other animals – before we evolved the self-awareness that cut us off from the others, that got us caught in our heads, in our bodies, in our civilizations; that got us kicked out of Eden. Now we only have a dim memory of what it is like to be the animals that we are. And so we seek out, through our imaginations and our liturgy and our magic, the connection with the animal world that even the ridiculous amount of DNA we share with other creatures can no longer provide.
Or...2021-12-1100 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerAnyone Can Whistle: Sondheim and our Queer, Jewish Longing to Belong (Audio)
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2021-11-2700 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerDinah, Rittenhouse, and Male Violence (Audio Podcast)The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse comes during the week of Vayishlach, and the painful Torah story of Dinah. What do these stories have to tell us about how our society looks at male violence? And how might we still see, hear, and heal Dinah?
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2021-11-2000 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerYHWH Was in this Place (Audio Podcast)
A prophetic dream helps Jacob recognize the Divine that is immanent in space. What do we need to do to have a zap of realization? It's easy when we're in stunning nature. Harder at the hospital.
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2021-11-1300 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerPutting it to Rest (Audio & Video Podcast)In Chayei Sarah we see Isaac and Ishmael shoulder to shoulder burying their father. How is it possible to resist the expectation to be enemies and let go of the past's hold on us?
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2021-10-3000 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerA Witness of Angels (Audio Podcast)
After Avram makes a covenant with God, we meet Sarah, then called Sarai, and learn that despite her advanced age, she has not been able to bear children. Discouraged, frustrated, she gives her servant, Hagar, to Avram as a wife and Hagar becomes pregnant and hostility and jealousy breaks out between Sarai and Hagar. Sarai treats Hagar harshly and Hagar flees.
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2021-10-1600 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerOn the Sea (Audio Podcast)
While our bodies are something like 75,000 cubic centimeters of saltwater, our minds, our spirits, are Oceans. It is comforting to be contained in these familiar bodies. But there is something in us that wants to be vast. This is, I think, why we live here, why we go to the Ocean when our spirits are low, why we dream of being on or in the Ocean. We want to recapture the sense of endlessness that our souls once knew.
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2021-10-0900 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerTheology of the Cubs (Audio Podcast)In 2016, on the eve of the World Series, during the holiday of Sukkot, amid a nasty and unsettling presidential election, I found myself watching baseball like I hadn’t since childhood. The Cubs, after a 108-year drought, won the World Series title that year. This year, as I begin to ease into SF Giants fandom (gimme a break; I’ve only been in the Bay Area for 32 years), and as we head toward post-season, I think back on the lessons I learned from loving the Cubs, leaving the Cubs, and returning to the Cubs. I decided to repost this essa...2021-10-0200 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerYou Can't Take it With You: Shmitah and Release (Audio Podcast)
You will not, in death, get the apology that you have been waiting for in life. So why carry it to your grave? Why not imitate the grave now and release the debt? What would it feel like to let go of the apology you think you are owed? What a relief that might be not for them, but for you.
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2021-09-1700 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerHappy Camper: Entering a Year of Letting Go (Audio Podcast)
On the morning of Day Two, you realize there is no shower coming, and there is no mirror to reflect how well you’ve tamed the wild of your face. There is no internet to amuse you, and no savior to bring the important item you forgot. This is when you begin to surrender. Letting your existence, along with your appearance, go fallow. This is when I begin to feel all the grief that has welled up inside of me. The sorrow that comes from living in human civilization, in constant battle with nature, even though I’ve mo...2021-09-0700 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerWhat If (Not): Wonderment and Integration in Psalm 27
Psalm 27, the gorgeous, heart-filled, and raw piece of holy poetry that accompanies the month of Elul, challenges us to ask what our lives would be like if we couldn't see the good, the magic, the Divine, in the world around us. What if I couldn't? It's hard to say...
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I am indebted to my friend and mentor Rabbi Eli Cohen, who pointed out the dots, the Elul anagram, and the fact that this is a conditional clause whose conditions are never revealed, and challenged me to imagine why.The chant of...2021-09-0400 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Acronyms of Elul (Audio Podcast)A Yiddish women's blessing for the month of Elul teaches us that three anagrams forming the word Elul offer us a roadmap for transforming dread to love to action and fulfillment.
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2021-08-0900 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Test is Love (Audio Podcast)Maybe our journeys of hardship and danger are not tests of endurance or tests of faith. If they are tests of anything, maybe they are tests of love.
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2021-07-3100 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerEyleh Had'varim: Famous Last Words (Audio Podcast)
Ultimately, an ethical will is for us, not for our children or grandchildren. Because we can’t really control what people in the post-us future will do. We can’t force those who follow us into a mold of our devising. The future belongs to them, not to us, and it is a mistake to cling too tightly.
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2021-07-1700 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Light in the Middle of the Tunnel (Audio Podcast)
Since we began sheltering in place, we have, by my count, spent 69 consecutive Shabbatot together, here in this dazzling Zoom Room. Sixty-nine opportunities to sit together and breathe. Six-nine opportunities to gently push back against the narrowness of the time. To feel expansive. Shabbat has been our technology for resilience. The light inside the tunnel.
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2021-07-1000 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerNot One Left (Audio Podcast)
Sometimes we are present to witness the end of a generation. When do history and memory give way to imagination?
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2021-07-0300 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerJunco Torah (Audio Podcast)
The flora and fauna at my house are very, very alive. There are many personalities crowding around our house, and under our house, and sometimes in our house. Each has its own Torah. Each has its unintended teaching for me.
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2021-05-2900 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerBlessings During a Surge of Violence (Audio Podcast)
B’rukhah haTikvahBlessed be my hope, which continues to live. May it be not fantasy but demand. A demand upon heaven and a demand upon earth. May hope be rewarded, speedily, in our time. Rewarded with peace. Rewarded with breath. Rewarded with ordinary, unremarkable coexistence. Rewarded with yet more hope.
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2021-05-1500 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerSixes and Sevens (Audio Podcast)
Today is the 6th day of the 7 days of the 6th week of the 7 weeks of the Omer. And here we are in the 6th year of the 7-year shmitah cycle. What does it mean to be in the 6, anticipating the 7?
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2021-05-0800 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerMt. Meron, Zohar, and Us (Audio Podcast)
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai died and was buried on Mt. Meron, having instructed his disciples to visit his grave and celebrate his memory annually. Which is what was happening yesterday, because the number of his disciples has grown, no longer ten, but tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and includes all of those people who were there, just as it includes us as well.
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2021-05-0100 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerTo Be Impervious (Audio Podcast)
For Parashat Shemini 5781
Oh to be so impervious! To hold the weight of the hardship of the people and for it not to absorb through our skin and into our bones! But no, we are so porous. N’kavim n’kavim chalulim chalulim as we say in our morning prayers. We are porous and penetrable! We were made that way.
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2021-04-1200 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerPesach 7: Obstacles, Love, Dew, and the Sea (Audio Podcast)
This seventh day of Pesach is an intersection of Shabbat time, Passover time, mythic story, Divine names, the coming of dew, and the poetry of our medieval ancestors. It brings to mind obstacles, liberation, and love. (Or just scroll down for the treats.)
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Special Pesach 7 Treats:Lorenzo Valensi’s gorgeous Mi Chamocha, at last recorded this week. Click here.Alison Luterman’s brilliant poem, “Sometimes Even the Word Obstacle is an Obstacle.” Click here.Ahuveykha Ahevukha – a piyyut for Shabbat morning during Pesach, incorporating rhyme, acrostics, and lines...2021-04-0300 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerShabbat HaGadol: Between the Generations (Audio Podcast)
We tell the old tales not as they-stories but as we-stories, still working through how we carry our enslavement with us and still chewing on what freedom might be. We tell the old stories and let the youngest at the table ask the questions. And we respond as honestly and as carefully as we can, knowing that our answers will have ripples for seven generations…
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2021-03-2700 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerNot-One, Not-Two, Not-Three (Audio Podcast)
Why don’t Jews count people? No sooner do we count ourselves than we notice our extreme vulnerability and ephemerality in this life and this world. And thus the inherent bravery implied in the phrase “stand up and be counted.”
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2021-03-0600 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerShechinah Swoon (Audio Podcast)
Unlike some depictions, Esther had no need to swoon when she entered Achashverosh's throne room. After all, she was garbed in Shechinah.
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I explore this moment and its mysticism more deeply in an article in Evolve Magazine. Click here.2021-02-2700 min
Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life2021:01.18 - Rabbi Irwin Keller - An Inquiry into the Nature of the Jewish FaithJoin TNS Host Michael Lerner in a spiritual biography conversation with rabbi, teacher, writer, music-maker, and performer Irwin Keller.
Rabbi Irwin Keller
Irwin has served as spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom in Sonoma County, California, since 2008, and received his rabbinic ordination through the ALEPH ordination program in 2021. He is a co-founder and steward of the Taproot Community – a deep dive into mystical learning and spiritual practice for activists, artists and community ritualists.
He was a lawyer and advocate (including being the primary author of Chicago’s first gay rights law), and was a singer in America’s Favorite Dragapella Beauty...2021-02-091h 30
Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life2021:01.15 - Josie Iselin - The Curious World of Seaweed w/ Host Irwin KellerJoin TNS Host Irwin Keller for a conversation with artist and oceans activist Josie Iselin. Josie creates hauntingly beautiful artwork featuring the seaweed and kelp of our Bay Area coastline and ocean. Her research accompanies the image-making process and leads her ever deeper into the science and ecology of the near-shore ocean universe. Co-presented with The Mesa Refuge. https://mesarefuge.org
Watch a video about Josie’s work to accompany this podcast at: https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qlgrl-vrjnY
Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for...2021-02-011h 21Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerIn the Oasis (Audio Podcast)
We are in a kind of oasis moment right now. A place of respite does not need to be the perfect place or the best place. It just needs to be enough. And the relief and rest we feel will be real.
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2021-01-3000 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin Keller2020 Hindsight (Audio Podcast)
Despite the “good riddance 2020” memes, I actually feel that the last year, with all its challenges and surprises, needs to be seen and considered. I think about our forefather Jacob, who this week gives a farewell assessment of each of his twelve unruly sons. I know how much we want to say goodbye to these last twelve unruly months that brought us so much angst, but let’s take a look.
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2021-01-0200 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerIn a Christmas Mood (Audio Podcast)Making friends with Jesus, figuring out a handle for Christ, and managing Jewish Christmas guilt.
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2020-12-2600 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThat Light in Joseph (Audio Podcast)
Joseph, Overseer of Pharaoh’s Granaries. By Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1874. Source: Wikipedia.
One often-overlooked dimension of Joseph’s hiddenness has to do with his gender. Torah keeps pointing to something unusual about it. This includes references to his looks, his emotions, his social role, even his body.
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2020-12-1200 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerTo Love the Absent Mind (Audio Podcast)
I return from a 6-week leave of absence with questions , raised by an unfortunate meeting of home and car, about my own mind’s sudden leave of absence. And I return with the desire to honor the beautiful drashing and spiritual leadership brought forward in my absence by Shoshana Fershtman, D’vorah Grenn, Leiah Bowden, Neshamah Faraone, Rinat Abastado, Sally Churgel, Judith Goleman, Basha Hirschfeld, and Shari Brenner, and the Torah poems of Rita Losch.
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2020-12-0500 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerLet it Rain (Audio Podcast)I am worried that our will to live is being depleted. Not that people are dying because they gave up. Although clearly the world has become less hospitable, and our assessment of what future we might look forward to has shifted. But I'm talking about something beyond that. There is something about the usual flow of life through us and through this Creation that feels to be at risk.
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2020-10-1000 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerNotes on Transformation (Audio Podcast)
And here we are, wondering how to be part of this transformation, how to tend and cultivate it; how to keep it from becoming something dreadful and instead inch it toward something beautiful. I somehow picture it like that befuddling Olympic sport, curling. We can't force this rebirthing world to move forward the way we want. But we can skate alongside with brooms, and create the subtle conditions for it to gently incline toward blessing.(Apologies for having absent-mindedly placed by wristwatch next to my recording device.)
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2020-09-2800 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerIn the River of Light (Audio Podcast)
Rosh Hashana Drash for Congregation Ner Shalom, 2020/5781
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2020-09-1900 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerLate Season (Audio Podcast)
And there it was. My unspoken conviction that all fruition must come before age 60, while I'm still young in my own estimation. That if I didn't achieve whatever on some timeline, then I'd failed, and I might as well give it up. I sat there and laughed at myself, willing to deny my future self all sorts of fulfillment and joy, just because I thought 60 was too old.
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For video of a new setting of Psalm 27:1 written in honor of Rabbi Mark S. Shapiro and Rabbi Sarah Tauber, click here and scroll do...2020-09-0500 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Fires of Elul (Audio Podcast)
I have nothing to say about it. No way to beautify this extreme weather story. No silver lining to offer. Our species long ago stripped the planet of silver linings, using them as shiny decorations on the edifice of unsustainable living.
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2020-08-2200 minItzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerStations of the Journey (Audio Podcast)
The journey that we are on itself is a Divine Name. Each stop on it is a letter. This journey through stations of sorrow and hope, outrage and love, grief and fear and fatigue and coziness too. Each stop, each encampment wants to be noticed and counted, lest in retrospect it become a blur. Reflections on Parashat Mas'ei during COVID times.
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2020-07-1800 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerCounting and Chanting (Audio Podcast)
We are in many overlapping periods of time – the 22-day "narrow place" as well as the enduring shelter-in-place. Some thoughts on the flow of Jewish time, and on the musical traditions that we employ to accompany us on the journey.
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2020-07-1100 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerWalk Humbly (Audio Podcast)
God, you have made the human slightly less than angels. Which is, I'm sure, meant as a compliment. But just under the angels is a bummer of a spot to be in. Not high enough to really get the big picture we need and want. And not rooted in the earth enough to have the ways of knowing that other animals do, who do not have to try to figure out what is motivating them.
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2020-07-0400 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerGifts of the Queers (Audio Podcast)
It's Pride Season. And even though this is a difficult time, we must become adept at holding successes at the same time that we hold struggle. And so a little piece of celebration called "Gifts of the Queers" – a chance to recognize the role that LGBTQI people have played in our culture, including our Jewish culture, that we don't so often identify and name.
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2020-06-2700 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerCross the Jordan (Audio Podcast)
It is harder to leave the Wilderness than it looks. We are peeking across a border into a Paradise right now, where we could be bigger than we are now; our spirits enormous as giants. But it is easier to stay grasshoppers, shrunken, constricted, hard-shelled, afraid of being trampled.
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2020-06-2000 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerTorah Says Witness, Including Your Whiteness (Audio Podcast)
This week’s Torah demonstrates the importance of witnessing in order to make something real enough to heal.
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2020-06-1300 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerTo Breathe Free (Audio Podcast)Our Jewish European ancestors tossed their tefillin overboard along with their languages, rituals and personal histories. They sacrificed their particularity so that we could be Americans. By which we now understand – so we could be White. Now, to take our place in this movement, we have a task – at least those of us who read and live as white – which is to dissimilate. To unlearn. To unlearn all the lessons that whiteness has taught us about who we see and who we don't see…. And whose breath is essential.
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2020-06-0600 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerBring on Some Revelation (with a side of Torah, please) – Audio Podcast
It is right for us to want, expect, demand a new Revelation in this moment. And we must remember that the Revelation is not itself the transformation. The Revelation must be big, global, revolutionary. But the Transformation will only come in small acts.
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2020-05-3000 min
Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life2020:05.22 - Irwin Keller - Torah Teachings for Precarious TimesJoin TNS Host Michael Lerner in a webinar conversation with Irwin Keller, jewish spiritual leader, musician, and faculty member of Commonweal’s Taproot Gathering.
Irwin Keller
Irwin is the spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom in Sonoma County, California, since 2008. His past work included LGBT advocacy, HIV legal services, and 21 years as a singing drag queen with The Kinsey Sicks, America’s Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet. Irwin’s sermons and essays on Torah, mysticism, God, politics, disillusionment and hope can be found on his blog, Itzik’s Well, found at irwinkeller.com. Irwin is a steward and faculty member of Commonwe...2020-05-291h 34Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerWilderness and Garden (Audio Podcast)
Maybe the most salient difference between a Wilderness and a Garden is the fact of being witnessed. And the speech waiting for us in the Wilderness? Maybe it’s not chatter and not the earth-shaking thrum of God at Sinai. But the loving voice of a gardener.
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2020-05-2300 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerTourist in Shapeless Time (Audio Podcast)
It was easy and heroic to maintain this seclusion for a while, when it was new, when we were constantly problem-solving. When our confinement was itself movement into the unknown. But at this point, I have depleted my internal resources.Can I let go of my need for every moment of this terrible time to be productive or meaningful or insight-giving? What will it be like to let this time be: let it be its frustrating, tedious, anxious and sad self, without the pressure of having to be the source of global transformation or personal enlightenment?
...2020-05-1600 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerA Theology of COVID Times (Audio Podcast)
Where is God in all of this? The answer is, maybe, everywhere. And why isn’t God intervening? Of course God is intervening. In fact we are doing so every day.
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2020-05-0900 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerIsolation, AIDS Flashbacks, & Divine Embrace (Audio Podcast)
There are pieces of this isolation I want to remember and bring with me when we are finally able to move freely about the cabin. But I also know that this isolation, no matter how pleasant parts of it may be, is something we will all need to reckon with over time. Because there is injury in going so long not touching and not being touched! Noticing and having to ignore the skin’s desire to feel skin, our bones’ desire to be pressed in an embrace.
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2020-05-0200 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThrough the Lattice (Audio Podcast)
The doe sauntered away, leaving me wondering how we got here. Our glorious, sorry species. How did we end up living this way? So far removed from the rest of Creation that is just outside our door? How did we end up seeing this Earth so imperfectly, as if through carnival glass?
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2020-04-2500 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerDreamers, Awake! You've Got Mail (Audio Podcast)
Talmud says a dream uninterpreted is like a letter left unread. What does this if-only-it-were-a-dream time have to say to us?
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2020-04-1100 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerThe Mood that Came to Dinner (Audio Podcast)
Anxiety is of no use. It takes up space and disrupts work and relationships. But what if it’s squatting in your house, refusing to leave?
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2020-04-0400 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerPlanet of Priests (Audio Podcast)
Torah tells us that we are meant to be a nation of priests. It is our calling and our destiny. And now the call is even broader. Because right now we are being called to be a Planet of Priests. Each of us tending the altar of our relationships with God and Earth and each other. Offering up our guilt over the profit-driven, Earth-consuming culture we have allowed to take root. And offering up like fragrant incense our gratitude for the simple and intimate gifts of connection and food and shelter.
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2020-03-2800 min
Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin KellerKoved – Audio Version
In this moment of unfolding epidemic, I am called to honor the complexity of the Creation we live in. This Creation in which uncountable species compete for space and survival, including the tiniest ones, who can sometimes, without malice, take down the mightiest among us
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2020-03-0700 min
Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life2017.01.09: Chas Nol with Irwin Keller - Radical FaeriesTNS host Irwin Keller in conversation with Chas Nol in a spirited discussion titled "Radical Faeries - Unleashing the Sissy Boy."2017-02-281h 19