Ways of Awe

Maia Brown & Shelby Handler
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Judaism
  • Series

Weaving together interpretative translations, research, interviews, and sounds, Ways of Awe is a queer anti-Zionist audio companion for the Jewish High Holidays. Join talmud scholars, rabbis, and artists as they unearth the meanings, grammar, and ancient gossip inside the holiest prayers of the Jewish year. Created by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, these audio collages range from meditative to liberatory, grief-stricken to playful, irreverent to awestruck, and from the ancestral to the immediate.

Season 1

  1. Season 1, Episode 1 Trailer

    Ways of Awe Introduction

    This episode of Ways of Awe introduces the project through an informal conversation with its creators, Maia Brown and Shelby Handler.  Show Notes Ways of Awe was written by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, based on translations originally shared with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, WA on unceded Coast Salish, Duwamish land. All episodes edited by Maia Brown. Audio engineering by Daniel Guenther. Thank you to Ross Kirshenbaum, or Levoneh, and Peter Lippman, and Jimmy Austin for our show music, and to Jenny Asarnow for their field recordings. Thank you to the Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Support Program, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture Smart Ventures Program, and Signal Fire Coop. Thank you to the members of our community who lent their collective  prayer-voices to this episode. Thank you to Hannah Epstein for designing our promotional images. To learn more about the communities that inspired this project:  SVARA: A Traditionally Radical YeshivaKadima Reconstructionist Community Tell us what you think! Connect with Ways of Awe:  https://www.instagram.com/waysofawe/ https://signalfirecoop.org/ways-of-awe/ waysofawe@gmail.com

  2. Episode 2

    Kol Nidre

    This episode of Ways of Awe features the Kol Nidre (“All Vows”), the prayer that opens Yom Kippur as the sun sets. Show Notes Ways of Awe was written by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, based on translations originally shared with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, WA on unceded Coast Salish, Duwamish land. All episodes edited by Maia Brown. Audio engineering by Daniel Guenther. Thank you to Ross Kirshenbaum, or Levoneh, and Peter Lippman, and Jimmy Austin for our show music, and to Jenny Asarnow for their field recordings. Thank you to the Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Support Program and the King County Office of Arts & Culture, Smart Ventures Program, and Signal Fire Coop. Thank you to Hannah Epstein for designing our promotional images. Thank you to those who lent their prayer-voices to this episode: Noraa Kaplan, Sharone Sayegh, Moyshe Oysher. Thank you to Jeannie Wells-Yablonsky from the Seattle Symphony for sharing her rendition of Kol Nidre. Excerpt from ‘Kol Nidre,’ performed by Sharone Sayegh in the Iraqi Sephardic tradition. Produced by Reboot in partnership with Hillel International for Higher Holidays 2020. Used by permission. Thank you to our guests for this episode: Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg is a writer, educator and organizer and calendar-maker based on Dakota land in Minneapolis. She became a rabbi in order to learn diverse and nuanced histories, tell stories, and create spaces, ritual, and organizing that helps transform our relationships to past, present and future. She is co-author, alongside Rabbi Ariana Katz, of For Times Such As These: A Radical’s Guide to the Jewish Year, authored an Introduction to Trauma, Healing and Resilience for Rabbis, Jewish Educators and Organizers. She is a founding collective member of  Signal Fire Radical Jewish Artist Cooperative, and a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council. Rabbi Xava De Cordova is a disabled, Sefradi, Mizraxi trans woman and co-host of the world's first Queer Talmud podcast, "Xai, how are you?". She is a long-time SVARA-style Talmud learner and SVARA teaching kollel fellow who got her start as a teacher by creating Beit Midrash Behind Bars, an organization that facilitated Jewish learning opportunities for incarcerated people in Washington State. She is also the co-Rosh Yeshiva of Shel Maala, which she co-founded with her incredible co-Rosh, Binya. She lives in Providence, RI, where she regularly produces Jewish ritual theatre (or did, before the pandemic) and does her best to steward the radical tradition she's been blessed to inherit. Some sources that informed this episode:  Jewish Emptiness: Kavannot for Kol Nidrei by Rabbi Xava De CordovaThe Case Against Kol Nidre by Adam SoclofKol Nidre: Past, Present, and Future by Richard-SteinerKol Nidre entry in the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia A Brief History of the Kol Nidrei Prayer by Cantor Deborrah CannizzaroExploring Kol Nidre by David SchwartzThe Geonim by Eli BarnaviKol Nidre Wikipedia EntryThis Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared by Rabbi Alan LewTell us what you think! Connect with Ways of Awe:  https://www.instagram.com/waysofawe/ https://signalfirecoop.org/ways-of-awe/ waysofawe@gmail.com

  3. Episode 3

    Al-Cheyt

    This episode of Ways of Awe features the Al Cheyt prayer, one of the central atonement prayers of Yom Kippur–a primary part of the Vidui, or Confession.  Show Notes Ways of Awe was written by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, based on translations originally shared with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, WA on unceded Coast Salish, Duwamish land. All episodes edited by Maia Brown. Audio engineering by Daniel Guenther. Thank you to Ross Kirshenbaum, or Levoneh, and Peter Lippman, and Jimmy Austin for our show music, and to Jenny Asarnow for their field recordings. Thank you to the Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Support Program, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture Smart Ventures Program, and Signal Fire Coop. Thank you to the members of our community who lent their prayer-voices to this episode: Tzali Loren. Thank you to Hannah Epstein for designing our promotional images. Thank you to our guests for this episode: Binya Kóatz is a sefardi / ashki / moroccan / argentinean / ukranian / french trans jewish torah-lover, who teaches, sings, organizes jewish community. She is originally from Queens, and resides on Ohlone Land in the East Bay. Person/comedian: @binya_donethat. Drag: @auntie.semitism. Band: @krekhts. Organizing: @jswana.bay. Yeshiva: @shelmaalayeshiva Some sources that informed this episode:  About Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon (Maimondes) About the SVARA Yeshiva Learning Method and the Crash TalkKabbalistic Sources about Tzimtzum (the idea of G-d’s constriction during creation)Tell us what you think! Connect with Ways of Awe:  https://www.instagram.com/waysofawe/ https://signalfirecoop.org/ways-of-awe/ waysofawe@gmail.com

  4. Episode 4

    Kaddish

    This episode of Ways of Awe features the Mourner’s Kaddish, a prayer that’s recited year-round, but has a particular charge during the Days of Awe.  Show Notes Ways of Awe was written by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, based on translations originally shared with the Kadima Reconstructionist Community in Seattle, WA on unceded Coast Salish, Duwamish land. All episodes edited by Maia Brown. Audio engineering by Daniel Guenther. Thank you to Ross Kirshenbaum, or Levoneh, and Peter Lippman, and Jimmy Austin for our show music, and to Jenny Asarnow for their field recordings. Thank you to the Jack Straw Cultural Center Artist Support Program, the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture Smart Ventures Program, and Signal Fire Coop. Thank you to Hannah Epstein for designing our promotional images. Thank you to the members of our community who lent their prayer-voices to this episode: Rachel Edelman, Tzali Loren, Moishe-Volf Dolman, Avreml Gross-Grand, Colin Coltrera, Zimyl Adler, and many more. Thank you to Noam Lerman for sharing their setting of a tkhine for yizkor, “Yizkor Di Neshomes”.  Thank you to our guests for this episode: Mónica Gomery is a rabbi and writer. She currently serves on the clergy team of Kol Tzedek Synagogue in West Philadelphia, and taught on the faculty of SVARA from 2015-2024. Mónica is a co-founder of Let My People Sing! and the author of three books of poetry. She is passionate about supporting people who have been denied access to, disconnected from, and marginalized by ancient traditions to gain access to these traditions as a resource for empowerment and transformation in their lives, so that they can become vessels for healing and justice in the world. Laynie Soloman is a passionate teacher and Torah-lover who seeks to uplift the piously irreverent, queer, and subversive spirit of Jewish text and theology. They serve as the Associate Rosh Yeshiva at SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, and co-founded the Trans Halakha Project, an initiative that seeks to create new forms of halakhic (Jewish legal) expression shaped by trans and non-binary Jews. Laynie has taught Jewish text and practice in a wide range of spaces, including Yeshivat Hadar, the Academy for Jewish Religion, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. They believe that grounding in, learning, and expressing ourselves through Torah is a liberatory spiritual practice and source of cultural resistance that can help us live with greater integrity, rootedness, and joy. You can find their work at layniesolomxn.com. noam lerman is a story-collector, shabes and nature-lover, musician, grief worker, Yiddishist, soyfer(scribe) and amulet maker, and zogerke/rabbi. They work with Der Tkhines Proyekt, which provides experimental and songful workshops that give life to Yiddish tkhines (spontaneous supplications) that were/are created by women, trans, and gender-marginalized folk. Learn more about tkhines at spontaneousprayer.com. noa is a learner, teacher, ritual leader, scribe-in-training, and community facilitator. queer and of mixed jewish lineages, n organizes as part of a Maghrebi-forward Ashkifardi kehilla on Kanien’kehá:ka lands. n learns and teaches Torah and tefila, does community medicking and disability justice and harm reduction with young people, plays with kids, and works with others who are building towards freedom for all.  Some sources that informed this episode:  Kaddish by Leon WieseltierDevelopment and History of the Kaddish by Anita DiamantA Brief of History of Kaddish by Rabbi Gil StudentHow pandemics in Jewish history shaped mourners' Kaddish by Levi CooperFinding My Way to the Mourner’s Kaddish by Richard ChessJewish Virtual Library on the Mourner’s KaddishA Study of Sephardic and Ashkenazic Liturgy by Rabbi Hayyim AngelTell us what you think! Connect with Ways of Awe:  https://www.instagram.com/waysofawe/ https://signalfirecoop.org/ways-of-awe/ waysofawe@gmail.com

Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Weaving together interpretative translations, research, interviews, and sounds, Ways of Awe is a queer anti-Zionist audio companion for the Jewish High Holidays. Join talmud scholars, rabbis, and artists as they unearth the meanings, grammar, and ancient gossip inside the holiest prayers of the Jewish year. Created by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, these audio collages range from meditative to liberatory, grief-stricken to playful, irreverent to awestruck, and from the ancestral to the immediate.

Information

  • Creator
    Maia Brown & Shelby Handler
  • Episodes
    4
  • Seasons
    1
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Ways of Awe
  • Show Website
    Ways of Awe