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Message: <br /><br /> If you are having trouble reading this email, you may view this article online at: http://www.jweekly.com/62567/full/62567/israeli-pairs-spiritual-road-show-heading-to-bay-area/ <br /><br /> <b>Israeli pair’s spiritual road show heading to Bay Area</b> <br /> Thursday, August 11, 2011 | by dan pine <br /><br /><p>Chaya Kaplan-Lester wasn’t born to be wild, but she and her husband, Rabbi Hillel Lester, definitely got their motor running and have headed out on the highway.</p> <p>Theirs is no ordinary road trip. The Israeli couple and their three kids are cruising around in a 38-foot RV on a 10-day journey that will include several stops in California, including three in the Bay Area.</p> <p>Their specialty is running workshops that promote spiritual growth, and their principle tool is the Torah.</p> <p>While in the Bay Area, they will conduct a seminar at San Francisco’s Shalom School, a d’var Torah at Berkeley’s Ohr HaChaim Beit Midrash and a larger-scale workshop at Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley.</p> <p> <div class="capDivLeft" style="width: 216px;"><img alt="Rabbi Hillel Lester and Chaya Kaplan-Lester" class="left" height="300" src="http://www.jweekly.com/images/uploads/t08_12_11/BAchaya812.jpg" title="Rabbi Hillel Lester and Chaya Kaplan-Lester" width="216" /> <div class="caption">Rabbi Hillel Lester and Chaya Kaplan-Lester</div> </div> At the Shalom School, Kaplan-Lester will lead a Tu B’Av seminar she says mixes Kabbalistic teachings and psychological exercises surrounding the holiday (sometimes called Judaism’s Valentine’s Day).</p> <p>At the Chochmat HaLev event, Rabbi Lester will lead a workshop called “Breaking in Order to Become Whole: An Inner Journey from Tisha B’Av to Rosh Hashanah.” He draws on biblical stories and insights to address the individual’s potential for transformation.</p> <p>His wife addresses similar issues, only she speaks to her audience through theater and poetry. At Chochmat HaLev, she will perform her one-woman show “Babel’s Daughter: From the Bible-Belt to the Holy Land.” While autobiographical, the show is intended to be more than first-person theater.</p> <p>“I wanted to make it something not just about entertainment,” Kaplan-Lester says. “People can turn on their TiVo for that. It’s about people having their own insightful revelatory journey, using my story as an echo chamber.”</p> <p>In the play she recounts her life story, growing up disinterestedly Jewish in Memphis, Tenn., turning rebel then discovering a richer religious life in Israel. She then invites audience members to take notes describing their own personal journeys.</p> <p>Afterward, everyone shares.</p> <p>Kaplan-Lester and her husband — who met and married six years ago while living in Berkeley — will soon return to Israel, where they are about to formally open the Jerusalem Center for Transformative Torah. There they blend traditional psychotherapy with Torah study and Jewish meditation.</p> <p>She calls it “Esalen meets Jerusalem” (Esalen is a humanistic, multidisciplinary retreat center in Big Sur.)</p> <p>“It’s our passion,” Kaplan-Lester says of the couple’s center, which until now had operated without a permanent location. “It’s about creating a banner in the Jewish world, blending psychology and Judaism.  We hope to say this is the next frontier.”</p> <p>They have the credentials to back it up. The rabbi received his ordination at the Sulam Yaacov Yeshiva in Jerusalem and is a certified meditation teacher. His wife studied Jewish theology at the University of Oxford and earned a master’s in clinical psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco in 2007.</p> <p>After they moved to Israel, they then merged their professional, personal and spiritual lives. In addition to her practice (which combines traditional psychotherapy and Torah insights), Kaplan-Lester also blogs for the Jerusalem Post and writes poetry.</p> <p>A major aspect of the couple’s mission is extending their Torah-based healing to all Jews, no matter their level of religious observance or Jewish education.</p> <p>“I’m Torah observant,” Kaplan-Lester says, “yet I feel I want to transcend the denominations. You don’t often find that in a Torah-observant person.”</p> <p>And how do they manage to run their center, treat clients and raise three children?</p> <p>“My husband and I have an ideal of an egalitarian relationship,” Kaplan-Lester says. “He’s incredibly supportive, and that shared spirit allows me to be productive. And we don’t sleep.”</p> <p> </p> <p><strong>Rabbi Hillel Lester and Chaya Kaplan-Lester</strong> will give presentations at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 18 at the Shalom School, 834 28th Ave., S.F. $20; and 2 p.m. Aug. 21 at Chochmat HaLev, 2215 Prince St., Berkeley. $18. Information: <a href="http://www.havayah.com">http://www.havayah.com</a>.</p>

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