About

Sunlight shining through blades of grass.

Shamir Collective advises spiritual leaders in renewing the Jewish relationship with the earth through creating and promoting creative ritual, mindfulness, and transformative experiential learning.

Our network of Jewish educators, Kohanot (Hebrew priestesses), Jewish communal farmers, rabbis, and lay leaders are collaborating to re-establish these modes of Jewish engagement. Our leaders are reviving ancient modes of relating and engaging with Jewish spiritual practice. By participating in this network, they lift up the spiritual leadership of women and non-binary individuals, earth-based spiritual practice, and embodied communal worship. Shamir Collective also highlights these lesser-known initiatives and provides opportunities for professionals to exchange information and ideas.

Our Team
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Sarah Chandler aka Kohenet Shamirah

Founder and CEO

Sarah Chandler (she/her) aka Kohenet Shamirah is a Brooklyn-based Jewish educator, artist, activist, healer, and poet. She teaches, writes, and consults on issues related to Judaism, earth-based spiritual practice, respectful workplaces, mindfulness, and farming. An ordained Kohenet with the Hebrew Priestess Institute and a trainer for “Taamod: Stand Up!”, she is also an advanced student of Kabbalistic dream work at The School of Images. Previously, Sarah served as the Director of Romemu Yeshiva, Chief Compassion Officer of Jewish Initiative for Animals, and Director of Earth Based Spiritual Practices at Adamah’s Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. Currently, she is the CEO of Shamir Collective, as a coach and consultant to high-profile and emergent artists and authors.

Aya Baron

Rabbinic Fellow & Chapbook Co-Editor

Aya is a scholar, wilderness guide, and ritualist pursuing rabbinic ordination at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College after recently completing her M.A. in Jewish Studies from the Graduate Theological Union. Her studies build on six years of leadership at Wilderness Torah, an organization committed to reconnecting Judaism to its natural cycles. Here she established herself as a pioneer in earth-based Jewish practice by developing outdoor rites of passage experiences for B’nai Mitzvah age youth and training local and international teams of educators. Aya has served several additional JOFEE organizations, most recently Hazon as a JOFEE fellowship mentor. Aya is happiest when jumping in a lake, writing poetry, or spending the day giggling with her 3-year-old niece.

Becca Heisler

Curriculum Consultant

Becca (she/her) is a ritualist, rabbinical student, culture worker, and Jewish outdoor educator who spends her days learning talmud and dreaming about joyous, diasporic, earth-connected Jewish communities past, present, and future. Since 2013, she has spent her career leading youth, teens, families, adults, and elders in connective Jewish experiences in wild places from 12,000-foot peaks to redwood forests to ice-cold rivers to urban gardens. Becca enjoys sunrises, making and sharing herbal medicine, belly laughing with her chevruta, and slow walks on shabbos afternoon.

Becca grew up near Chicago in the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations, and has been shaped by relationships with the lands of the Ohlone and Massachusetts peoples, on each coast of Turtle Island. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies and a B.S. in Mathematics from Tufts University, and anticipates Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew College in 2027. Becca is an alum of Urban Adamah, the JOFEE Fellowship, and the center for Jewish Nonviolence.

Arielle Sabot

Program Assistant

Arielle (they/she) is a Jewish scholar, artist, and farmer based in New York and Vermont. They have a master’s in Jewish Gender and Women’s Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary where they wrote their thesis on Mara Benjamin’s scholarship as a source for creating a new Jewish ecofeminist ethics. Arielle works with Shamir Collective to support client projects, manage websites, and be Sarah’s right hand for events.

Arielle also facilitates and teaches classes with older adults and teens at DOROT, lives and works at Living Tree Alliance, and directs Jewish Communities of Vermont’s (JCVT) statewide teen program.