Our Story
“Come and see how beloved the Jewish people are before God. As every place they were exiled, the Shechina – the Divine presence - went with them.” - Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai, Babylonian Talmud Megillah 29A
Every one of us is beloved, worthy of Divine accompaniment. We express belovedness with each other by emulating the Shechina and accompanying & supporting one another through our complex lives of joy and sorrow, triumph and trial, exile and homecoming.
Our Mission
Beloved supports and nourishes open-hearted spiritual leaders as they create and sustain new spaces of sacred belonging. Our Beloved leaders have a vision for a world they want to cultivate; we are here to help them bring that vision to fruition.
The spiritual leaders we support are inspired by the ancient Jewish wisdom of communal life at a more intimate scale, such as the minyan or the dinner table. These leaders cultivate in-person and virtual spaces where people go to be understood, nurtured, enlivened, connected, loved, & not alone.
The Beloved Methodology
To strengthen our leaders and their projects, Beloved offers:
Practical administrative and financial support; skillbuilding.
We support leaders by offering substantial operations assistance for their projects, including communication & donation platforms, executive & fundraising coaching, bookkeeping, and discounted fiscal sponsorship. We also offer training in the skills of starting and sustaining an organization including budgeting, fundraising (individuals and foundations), community organizing, constituency building, and communications.
Emotional, spiritual, & communal nourishment.
We nourish leaders through gatherings and retreats, peer support and spiritual formation, conversations we can't have anywhere else, and communities of practice. We nurture each of our beloveds' inner transformation as we build collective power for the transformation of American Jewish life.
We practice our methodology through:
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Beloved Seeds
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Beloved Blossoms
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Beloved Garden
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Beloved Roots
The world we dream of:
“The most precious gift love offers - the experience of knowing we always belong.” - bell hooks
In a Beloved world, each of us recognizes ourselves and each other as reflections of Divinity, worthy of attention and care, as beloved. No one will be other because we will know we belong to each other, the earth, and our Source. Our communal spaces will reflect this deep belonging; our example of love for each other will help grow our world into an abundant garden of love.
“Beloved allows me to be the kind of rabbi I want to be, and build a community I fully believe in. The work is hard, but the experiences, spaces and relationships that are created are priceless. When I was figuring out how to get started, the support Beloved provided was huge. I could take a leap with someone holding my hand, and for that, I am eternally grateful! ”
“The cohort meetings are a highlight. It is such great learning to hear about all different communities and projects, all in different stages. I find the conversations open, thought-provoking, and supportive. A game-changer for me was the conversation around “who do you serve?” I had been struggling through language around age demographics, and through this conversation realized but I could think about serving souls that are yearning for meaning. That is only one example of how the different way of thinking introduced at Beloved has helped me understand that I want my community to be a different kind of Jewish space. ”