About This Program
C-DEEP: The Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practice will be launching a new project called SOULIFT, with individually themed regional retreats beginning in the summer of 2018.
These times of tumult and change hold great potential for inner growth and connection to our Soul Perspective. SOULIFT will offer week-long retreats, immersions in spiritual practice that will help us to remain anchored to an awareness of the Divine flow of blessing, no matter what is happening in the world.
Each stand-alone intensive will be an opportunity to immerse ourselves in practices that incorporate the magic of sound, silence, movement, stillness, sacred text, shamanic journey, creative arts and nature mysticism. Each retreat will culminate in the joyous celebration of Shabbat.
Upcoming Programs
Program Instructor:
Rabbi Shefa Gold is a leader in ALEPH: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal and received her ordination both from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (z”l). She is the director of C-DEEP, The Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practice in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. She teaches workshops and retreats on the theory and art of Chanting, Devotional Healing, Spiritual Community-Building and Meditation.
Feedback From Participants in Shefa Gold’s Trainings...
Danya Underwood
To anyone considering embarking on this journey: do not hesitate! Do whatever it takes! This is the finest training offering you will find anywhere. This program is a treasure and studying intensively with visionary Rabbi Shefa Gold is an opportunity that should not be missed.
Donna Chava Friedman
The perspective Rabbi Shefa offers elicits a powerful way to be in deep relationship to G!d and one’s own truth, Jewishly. Using chant in this way will remain with me for the rest of my life. The the ability to grow in this, share, and teach it with others is a blessing. Shefa is a blessing.
Shira Orit
Never could I have imagined the healing, presence, peace and transformation that would come from my 18 months in Kol Zimra 3. The chanting allowed so many places in my heart to open.
Rabbi Alan Green
I cannot say enough good things about Rabbi Shefa Gold’s Kol Zimra program. I’ve known Shefa a long time, and I thought I was already familiar with her work. But intermittent exposure to Shefa’s Jewish Chant doesn’t begin to compare to four week-long intensives, each more powerful than the next. There is no question that I received far more than I bargained for in each installment of Kol Zimra. To anyone who has been searching for an experience of genuine spiritual depth in a Jewish context, I would say: your search ends (and begins) with Kol Zimra. In Kol Zimra, Shefa has succeeded in creating an entirely new phenomenon within Judaism — a simple, practical technology, based on Hebrew scripture, that anyone can utilize to their great spiritual and psychological benefit. In keeping with the tradition of all great spiritual revivals, it’s no exaggeration to say that Shefa has thrown wide open the gates of Jewish prayer. All who sincerely wish to enter them, can naturally, effortlessly enter them here.
Eva Friedner
… the KZ experience has changed my life. It gave me the tools with which to share the richness of our heritage through the depth and beauty of chant. Not only did it help me to get in touch with the multiple levels of my own being, but it helped me to share the spiraling possibilities of spirituality with others. KZ taught me leadership skills based on acceptance, connectedness, support, and ingathering. I loved the total experience.
Linda Zahavi
Our training helped me to focus on something that was really important to me even with what “little” I had already been doing, it opened me up to the range of possibility that exists in the medium of chant to the point where it seems limitless, boundless and infinitely exciting. And I am continually “surprised” by how well it is received, how it really reaches people in a deep place and fosters their connection with divine energy. My life’s purpose has been more clearly defined by what we have done.
Malkah Binah
… Shefa Gold’s 18-month Kol Zimra Chant Leader Training… has been one of the most valuable and transformative trainings in my rabbinic career… Shefa is a master teacher, retreat leader, ritual facilitator, and community builder. She brings a spirit of joy, generosity, and integrity to this work, which is deeply rooted in Torah. One of the significant gifts I received through this training is a softening of the quality of my presence, and I find that the services I lead take participants to deeper places, the meetings I participate in go much smoother, and my interactions with family, friends are more nourishing.
Jessica Kreimerman-Lew
Shefa teaches chant and leadership, giving us a balanced and original model, and practical elements to form loving containers for groups of our own. … the most important thing I received in this training was the sense of connection with the people who are today my spiritual family. Kol Zimra gave of herself to us in a personalized way, and from the first module the group had attained an aura of togetherness which Shefa, Rachmiel and Phyllis wove together through their unique style of teaching. A sense of wonder, moments of magic, attunement on a different level, ritual to encapsulate our lives and create sacred vessels of our instruments. Four weeks in eighteen months, through summers and winters, we were witnesses to the blossoming of each other. Everyone told us there was something special about the group: it was the chant, and the enchantress, which brought us together.
I highly recommend this training for anyone who wants to learn about their own leadership style, and about attaining a profound spiritual connection through sacred chant.
My experience with the Kol Zimra training program was much more than I could have even hoped for. The caliber of leadership, the strength of group connections and the depth of learning all contributed to an incredible 18 month journey, a journey which was more joyful and profound than words can express, a journey which continues still. This program changed my relationship to leadership, my relationship to my home community and my relationship with The Great Mystery itself.
Carolyn Silver-Alford
Kol Zimra [was] my first experience with Jewish renewal. As Education Director at a Conservative synagogue, I was looking for a program that would awaken my sense of wonder in my spiritual practice and revitalize my work. This training exceeded my expectations in every way. Kol Zimra has enriched both my personal practice and my professional life. The impact of this work has powerfully affected my teaching and, the energy and support I have been given, has made it possible for me to lift the level of learning at our school from the ordinary to new heights of spiritual excitement and academic eagerness. Rabbi Shefa Gold along with her colleagues Rabbi Phyllis Ocean and Rachmiel O’Regan have the ability to create a community of Jewish learners that has intellectual integrity and spiritual authenticity. I recommend this training to all those who have the privilege of teaching and leading Jewish young people in their communities. It will renew your commitment to Jewish service and invigorate your work and your heart.