Making Midrash: The Torah and You
The stories of our Torah resonate throughout our human experience. During our time together, Judith will share a few tales focusing on issues that are as alive in our personal experience as they were for our ancients. Participants will choose a story/issue that speaks to them and through exercises, games, art, and team coaching work to create original midrash that will speak to both their lives and a larger population.
– 2-3 hours
GETTING THE STORY OFF THE PAGE
Have you ever been moved by a story in print and retold it exactly as it was written, only to have it fall flat? Stories, for generations, were passed on orally. In order to help that printed story become three dimensional once again, you must blow the life back into it. This workshop will offer a model and practice at performing that very act.
– 2 hours
THE TECHNIQUES OF TELLING
During this workshop we will play with and stretch all of your potential assets for making a story you love come alive. From dramatic use of your voice, an expressive body, and an imagination that creates images in thin air, participants will play with techniques. Ultimately, you will emerge with a broader palette of expressive tools to choose from in your storytelling.
– 3 hours
HISTORY STORIES-BRINGING THE PAST ALIVE
We are a people of a rich and stories past. When we leave our history to be interpreted by others, what often suvives has little to do with actual human experience that filled a time and place. In order to preserve our past, we must claim it and give it shape so that it might live for our children and grandchildren. In this workshop you will learn how to take familial, community, and national episodes and make them into vital stories.
– 3-4 hours
No Straight Roads To Forgiveness
Holding on to wrongs done, pains inflicted, and injustices perpetrated upon us is certainly grounding. We know who to hate, to fear, to shun, and we are quickly defined by these deeply held convictions. But when we demarcate our lives and ourselves in this way, chances are we aren’t having much fun, nor are the folks with whom we share our days.
Can we use stories to drink this pain out of our hearts, and make room for forgiveness and the relationships that can follow? Alas, there is no step by step diagram or curriculum guide, but we will contemplate and explore this journey in our time together. Sharing segments from longer stories, exploring process, and with the full participation of all, we’ll attempt to sculpt possibilities that everyone can probe, scrutinize, and try.
– 3-5 hours
Authentic Interaction
Authentic interactions is when we, the Rabbis and educators are able to create spontaneous bridges between our listeners, ourselves, and the story. Much more subtle than planned participation AI requires that a presenter be open, flexible, and responsive to the environment and listeners in any setting. The tellers natural responses and adjustments in both style and story creates that unique, once in a life time, moment that makes the story, the dvar, the sermon, an absolutely unique moment of connection. Our time will be spent identifying that range of interactivity and playing with the possibilities that exist in shaping and reshaping our stories/sermons/ around the listeners who come to hear them.
– 2-3 hour workshop
From Heart to Heart
Storytelling, an ancient folk art, has recently been claimed as the communication bedrock for everything from Hollywood films, to corporate self definition (branding). It is powerful because it speaks from the heart of the teller to that of the listener, creating a bridge of understanding. In this workshop, participants will explore that bridge. How do we strengthen the investment of listeners? How do we create a resonance that will last beyond words? How do we shape and share stories that can change the world? Come with some tales (folk, fairy, historic, Biblical, or personal) that you love, and we will work on that essential thing that sets storytelling apart from other communication arts.
Judith Teaches Two Classes Annually:
Making Stories From Your Life, the first weekend in February:
Telling Stories to Children, the last week in June: