What WE’re About

Medicine Minyan offers ceremonial retreats, prayer trainings, sacred text study and more. We are interested in the power of communal prayer - the Minyan - and in deepening our experience through connection with Medicines (plants, music, breathwork, etc… read below for our understanding of Medicine). While some offerings are designed for a specific gender identity, we host offerings for all genders and all praying people. 

Many Jewish people feel deeply disappointed by the absence of a living spirit in the synagogue or the felt sense of spiritual power in Jewish ritual.  We hear you and have wrestled with this in our own lives. We are seeking a rich spiritual life and prayer community grounded in our ancestral Hebraic wisdom while fluid in its capacity for cross-cultural encounters. 

Indigenous peoples of the world have survived apocalyptic atrocities and remarkably, many of these communities continue to share their healing ways.  As students of Andean lineages, Lakota Red Road teachers, Dagara Medicine Ways, and many more, we aim to listen for the beautiful collaboration of indigenous spirituality with Judaism. When we come with humility and respect, knowing that we still have so much to learn, we discover countless blessings that inform and guide these offerings.

No prior experience with Jewish traditions or Medicine work is required to work with us, though if you are new to either we will take extra care to help you find your way in.

We are so excited that you’ve found your way here.

Your Guides

  • Dan Gavi ben Yisrael ben Ellie v’Kitsy

    Medicine Minyan co-founder, mentor, wilderness guide, traveler, father

    Daniel Schindelman Schoen comes to Medicine Minyan as one who dances between exile and belonging. In exile, Daniel practices yearning, sorrow and the deep humility that comes with the empty bowl. In belonging, Daniel he weaves vibrant circles of relationship and finds solace beneath the shelter of ancient trees. His devotion to this dance between longing and connection informs his contributions to the Medicine Minyan cultural space.

    As a wilderness guide, Daniel facilitates experiences of immersion into the more-than-human world. With a curious eye towards life's unfolding parade, Daniel finds joy and purpose in guiding people into contact with the inner stillness and insight that help shape our prayers.

    Daniel creates culturally imaginative and spiritually dynamic Jewish spaces with Medicine Minyan, Shoov, Manna Pilgrimages and Wilderness Torah. His passion for deeply authentic and creative religious community expresses itself through song, story, ritual, food and all the teachings and customs that help us to lead good lives.

    Daniel lives between the quartz mountains of Córdoba, Argentina and the redwood coast of Northern California. He is a devoted father, a lover of the piano and one who cherishes opportunities to joyfully engage with life’s mysteries.

  • Avraham ben Yosef v’Chava

    Medicine Minyan co-founder, men’s work facilitator, musician, healer, uncle, grandson

    Alexander was born into an Ashkenazi Jewish household where music and debate were celebrated. After 15 years as an opera singer Alexander passed through a 'dark night of the soul' and was caught by his teacher, don Oscar Miro-Quesada, who initiated him as a Mesa Carrier in the Pachakuti Mesa Tradition from Peru. Years later, the Medicine of the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso grabbed him and guided him to be initiated into "Stick Medicine.” The Medicine Path now guides and supports the healing men's work that Alexander offers through Manhood Embodied, a group coaching program for self-identified men that works at the intersection of psychology, spirituality, nature connection, and men's work.

    Alexander supports men to re-sensitize themselves, return to their bodies, and restore their sense of right-relationship with Self, others and the Earth.

    Alexander’s coaching practice is informed by Internal Family Systems therapy, earth-based Judaism, and indigenous traditions including plant medicine ceremony.

    Alexander has been an initiated song and medicine carrier with the Peruvian Pachakuti Mesa lineage for over a decade. He has worked intimately with several medicine and wisdom carriers who have shared their ways of praying with him and blessed him to carry on their teachings.

On Cultural Exchange and Extraction

It is our understanding that peoples and their cultures have been interacting since the beginning of time. Some of these interactions have been mutually respectful acts of exchange, others have been devastating acts of violence, theft and extraction, most have been complex to say the least. We hope that our work is one of cultural creativity through exchange and appreciation, in the long line of cultural adaptation that has given rise to so much resilience and vibrancy in peoples around the world.

We see that Jewish culture has consistently been responsive to and influenced by outside forces considered ‘other’. Through processes such as cultural sharing with neighbors, forced assimilation by oppressors, and diasporic movement, Jews have evolved and adapted culture many times, all while holding on to a thread of ancient tradition. We deeply honor our Jewish ancestors for the ways they protected and evolved these traditions in the face of systemic anti-semitism and attempts to exterminate the Jewish people. We locate ourselves in this long line of Jewish cultural adaptation and innovation. Given our positionality and identities as white-assimilated, Ashkenazi Jews who have benefited from the genocide of indigenous peoples and other forms of colonization/white supremacy, we tread softly in our cultural exchange and appreciation efforts.   

Medicine Minyan is dedicated to creating ceremonial experiences that bring forth the beauty and power of Jewish ancestral wisdom while honorably and skillfully integrating teachings and protocols from non-Jewish living lineages. . We have received medicine ways from our teachers, given to us with explicit encouragement and permission to support our reimagining and enlivening of Judaism’s brilliance. We are committed to giving back to our indigenous relatives, both near and far, which you can read more about in our Cost + Reciprocity section. 

Medicine

Our offerings are sourced from our overwhelming gratitude for the Medicines that have shaped our lives. We approach with humility and respect, knowing that we are on a long road of apprenticeship with these teachers. We understand the word ‘Medicine’ as a type of relationship that brings balance and wholeness. Medicines can be plants, instruments, teachings, rituals, and vibrations - anything that helps us bring harmony where there was once discord. Even discord itself can be a medicine in disrupting that which needs to be interrupted. We look forward to deepening with and studying Medicine ways together.

Jewish Identity

One of the old names of the Jewish people is “Ivrim” which can be translated to mean “boundary crossers”. We celebrate the long and complex history of Jewish identity as a wandering relationship to ancestry, culture, belief systems and land. We welcome Jews by birth, those who identify as Jew-ish, converts, and allies to Jews. While we will not be observing strict halachic practices such as serving Kosher food, our retreats are meant for both secular and religiously observant Jews. 

Israel / Palestine

Amongst the ongoing intense violence, polarization and confusion unfolding in Israel, Palestine and the wider Middle East, we seek to create prayer spaces that transcends political divisions, for the benefit of life. We hold all life as sacred, both Palestinian and Israeli, Muslim and Jew, and pray that our efforts in some way contribute to a more harmonious world.

By purposefully not labeling our political orientation, we aim to create a safe and courageous space for Jewish and non-Jewish people with a wide variety of understandings to come together, pray and find ways of building connection rather than further division.

Speaking to the power of Minyan

The Jewish-Yoga spiritual teacher Ram Dass once wrote:

“A true community is not just about being together; it’s about growing together, healing together, and walking each other home.”

When we speak of Minyan we are invoking a spirit of collectivity that increases our capacity to hold the joys and sorrows of existence. There is so much to be with - intergenerational trauma, climate chaos, geopolitical war games. The brokenness of the world is often overwhelming. By coming together in Minyan we enable greater possibility for being with the immensity of these times and engaging in deep transformation at the personal and collective level. When we sit next to each other around the fire, when we witness one another coming to the altar, when we share the intimacy of our prayers - we have the chance to feel more related to each other as Minyan.  

“When ten come together to pray, the Shechinah (Divine Presence) rests among them.” – Talmud, Berakhot 6a

Jewish tradition has long upheld the value of coming together in spiritual community, requiring a quorum for particular prayers and services. While we root ourselves in this ancient knowledge we also grieve the way classical Judaism limits the concept of Minyan to cis-men. Our lived experience has taught us that praying in multi-faceted, mixed gender groups is incredibly powerful and essential to our collective awakening. We both honor the wisdom of cohort based groupings while also challenging ourselves and our community members to stretch our capacity for expansive, unifying prayer circles across a range of differences.

Cost & RECIPROCITY

We acknowledge that charging money for ceremony is a complicated proposal. Many traditional cultures see medicine work as an integral part of healthy human life and do not involve systems of financial payment or commodification to participate. As facilitators, we honor the unpriceable value of this type of experience while also honoring our own time and energy as modern folks who need to pay rent, support our families and live in a financed world. So to be clear, we are not charging for the Medicine. That is a gift we all get to share. We ask participants to be generous in contributing towards the enormity of time it takes to create and facilitate these offerings, as well as the years of training and study to be able to offer Medicine in a good way.

We are committed to giving back a portion of our revenue to local and distant efforts to support indigenous peoples thriving in their cultural contexts. We support movements such as Heron’s Shadow and The Cultural Conservancy (North Bay), Sogoratea Land Trust (East Bay), Rosebud Reservation (South Dakota) and more. This ‘give back’ is included in the suggested ticket price for all Medicine Minyan offerings.