Towards a Progressive neo-Hasidism
Community Testimonials
Rabbi Dev Noily
Senior Rabbi at Kehilla Community Synagogue
(Oakland, California)
Dear Reader,
My name is Rabbi Dev Noily, and I’d like to share with you a story.
Sometimes, rarely, something appears in the world that, as soon as you behold it, makes you feel the warm, golden light of what is vital coming to meet you. In that same heart-opening moment, you can suddenly feel the depth of the lack and the longing that this gift has come to address. For me, Gashmius Magazine is that kind of rare gift.
In a world that changes too fast and too much for any of us to keep up, where our awareness is alternately lured in by the frivolous and burdened to the breaking point by the catastrophic, so many of us are searching for the loving and the righteous and the true. We seek the “river that flows from Eden to water the garden” (Genesis 2:10) - the spiritual, moral and intellectual tributaries that we can follow to the Source, that can show us how to live in a way that beholds and honors the sparks of divinity in everything that is.
Gashmius is like a treasure map to those tributaries for me. The storehouses of Hasidic tradition overflow with wisdom. But so many of us are separated from that wisdom by time, language, culture, collective trauma, and romanticized memory. Gashmius is like Jacob’s Ladder– connecting these distant realms to the earth where our bodies live, and changing us in the encounter.
I’m thinking of Jericho Vincent’s stunning piece on Feminism and Neo-Chasidism, of the tikkun (mending) of the invisibility of Chasidic women through Eva Strum Gross’s brilliant comic of Malka of Belz, and Jesse Noily’s deeply diasporic exploration of the production of the foundational text of Jewish mysticism. (Yes, I’m Jesse’s proud parent as well as his student.)
These, and so many other writings and resources that Gashmius have produced and collected, are where I turn for my own learning and inspiration, and where I excitedly send other seekers who are thirsty for the waters that can sustain us and connect us to our source in this time.
But in order to make this gift sustainable, they need our support.
Today I am asking you to make a one-time donation or become a sustaining member of the work at Gashmius. For just $18 dollars a month, you will enable them to edit and publish four releases of the innovative poetry, art, or writing that allows me to follow those tributaries back to their Source. In the next year, they hope to raise $170,000 to expand their offerings to include print publications, more regular releases, and learning fellowships to foster the next generation of neo-Hasidic thinkers and artists.
I hope you will join me in supporting this work.