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Taya Mâ Shere is a ritual artist & priestess embracing embodied, earth-honoring devotion as liberatory spiritual practice.
She serves as a professor of Organic Multi-Religious Ritual at Starr King School for the Ministry, named the most progressive theological institution in North America, and as Associate Director of the Center for Multi-Religious Studies, where she co-convenes The House of Dates.
Taya Mâ is founder of From the Deep, an emergent mystery school of earth, sea and soma. She hosts the acclaimed Jewish Ancestral Healing podcast and The Sarah & Hajar Series: Sacred Practice and Possibility at the Intersections of Judaism and Islam and co-hosted the Shift Network’s Mystics Summit.
Taya Mâ’s online courses include new offerings The Primordial Sacred and Luminous Ancestors of Earth, Sea and Sky as well as longtime favorites: Embodied Presence, Practice Makes Imperfect: Changing Your Life One Micro-Movement at a Time, Sex & the Sephirot: A Pleasure Journey Through the Omer and Completion: Embracing the Alchemy of Endings.
Taya Mâ co-founded the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess movement, and co-authored The Hebrew Priestess: Ancient and New Visions of Jewish Women’s Spiritual Leadership and Siddur haKohanot: A Hebrew Priestess Prayerbook.
She co-founded Makam Shekhina multi-religious Jewish and Sufi Muslim community committed to counter-oppressive devotion with her beloved collaborator Shaykh Dr. Ibrahim Baba Farajaje.
Taya Mâ’s many albums of sacred chant have been heralded as "cutting-edge mystic medicine music" and "transmissions which tap into collective memory."
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Embodied devotion is my passion. Exquisite presence and aligned pleasure are my primary modes of prayer. I play in realms of transformative ritual, weaving practices of elemental and ancestral reverence.
I adore the power and portal created when sound meets the sacred. I teach embodied vocalization, guide chant experiences and record lush devotional prayer. My Hebrew Goddess chant albums Wild Earth Shebrew, Halleluyah All Night, Torah Tantrika and This Bliss have been heralded as "cutting-edge mystic medicine music” and my newest album, Makam Shekhina, in cahoots with Shaykh Dr. Ibrahim Baba Farajaje and community, is Hebrew Arabic chants of counter-oppressive devotion.
My path is guided by Goddess.. I co-founded Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, a transformative ritual arts and spiritual leadership training for women & genderqueer folk embracing the Goddess in a Jewish context, and I co-authored The Hebrew Priestess: Ancient and New Visions of Jewish Women's Spiritual Leadership and Siddur HaKohanot: A Hebrew Priestess Prayerbook, primary texts for this movement. And after two and a half decades of practicing, serving as a spiritual leaders inside of, and working to transform the spiritual path of my Jewish ancestors, I now pray and guide prayer on a multi-religious path, with roots in earth-reverent Goddess traditions and Islamic Sufism. My current sacred offerings unfurl inside of From the Deep, an emerging mystery school of earth, sea and soma.
With my beloved collaborator Shaykh Dr. Ibrahim Baba Farajaje, I co-founded Makam Shekhina, a multi-religious community of Hebrew Priestesses and Sufi Dervishes gathering in embodied, multi-gender, ecstatic counter-oppressive devotion.
I serve as Assistant Professor of the Practice of Organic Multireligious Ritual at Starr-King School for the Ministry, known as the most progressive theological school in North America, where I train emergent clergy across faith traditions and serve as Associate Director of the Center for Multi-Religious Studies and co-convene our series The House of Dates. I recently shifted out of my role as core faculty of Embodied Ministry and Embodied Leadership at The Chaplaincy Institute, also in Berkeley, CA, though I continue to teach courses there each year.
I'm a practitioner of Somatic Experiencing, a body-awareness-based trauma healing modality, and trained in SE because of the ways it has deeply supported my own healing. Somatic Experiencing theory and practice - rooting in and returning to positive resource - informs my approach to both teaching and devotional contexts. I served for years as a practitioner and teacher of Ancestral Lineage Healing and remain awed by the immense blessing available through cultivating direct relationship with bright and benevolent lineage ancestors.
I host the Jewish Ancestral Healing podcast, engaging spiritual leaders, artists, activists and visionaries on their journeys of ancestral healing, embracing resilience, and ancestor reverence practices rooted in Jewish traditions and counter-oppressive devotion. spiritual leaders, artists, activists and visionaries on their journeys of ancestral healing, embracing resilience, and ancestor reverence practices rooted in Jewish traditions and counter-oppressive devotion.
I offer virtual courses in Embodied Presence, Jewish Ancestral Healing, Pleasure as Prayer and Conscious Menstruation. My newest course offerings are Luminous Ancestors of Earth, Sea and Sky. The journey is intimate and the empowerment is real.
The sweet synagogue where I rabbi'd for a decade named me Spiritual Leader Emeritus in 2015. It's wild to be both esteemed and former. I very occasionally still train bmitzvah officiants in the model of Mitzvanitiation rites-of-passage work I developed.
My journey of training up has not been linear. The version that fits in lines includes me studying the folklore of religion in a land called Ivy League and later sitting at the feet of plenty a renewal rabbi. The schooling that steeped me most strongly was with earth-reverent ones on remote beaches of Bahia, Brasil and with barely clad women singing to the moon on rowhouse rooftops in West Philly.
I tend temple / make home by the sea on Turtle Island, and journey regularly to the seaside in Maghreb where I immerse in & study ceremonial music.
I'm smiling bright at the possibility of connecting with you in reverent ritual play.