Jewish Women’s Storytelling Collective
The shared vision of the Jewish Women’s Storytelling Collective is to offer Jewish stories from a uniquely female perspective and to make those stories accessible to modern audiences.
Debra Gordon Zaslow was ordained as a maggidah by Zalman Schachtor-Shalomi in 1995. She travels nationwide telling stories and leading workshops in storytelling and writing. She holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and she taught storytelling at Southern Oregon University for thirty years. Her audio collection, Return Again, features Jewish healing stories, and her memoir, Bringing Bubbe Home, A Memoir of Letting Go Through Love and Death, chronicles midwifing her grandmother through the passage of death. She runs a maggid training program with her husband, Rabbi David Zaslow, in Ashland, Oregon, and together they lead Shabbat weekends across the country.
Gail Pasternack is a writer, storyteller, and educator, who was ordained as a maggidah by Maggidah Debra Gordon Zaslow and Rabbi David Zaslow in 2021. Her writing has appeared in Jewish Fiction.net, the New Mitzvah Stories for the Whole Family anthology, Wanderlust Journal, and The Fruit of Yitzhak’s Tree anthology. Since 2015, Gail has served on the board of directors of Willamette Writers and led the organization as its president for five years. A native New Yorker, Gail and her husband now reside in Portland, Oregon where she enjoys drinking cocktails, listening to live jazz, and dancing Argentine tango.
Deborah Rosenberg has been a professor at Southern Oregon University for over twenty years. She came to SOU from New York where she worked as faculty costume designer and costume shop supervisor at Ithaca College and SUNY Brockport, as well as guest draper at Cornell University and resident designer at Niagara University. Professional costume design credits include the Alley Theatre, Player’s Theatre Columbus, the Berkshire Theatre Festival, Shakespeare and Co., and theatres internationally. At SOU, Deborah teaches costume design and stage makeup. She holds a BA in anthropology from Trent University in Ontario and an MFA in costume design from North Carolina School of the Arts.
Lisa Huberman (they/them) is a storyteller, educator, performance artist, Jewish art nerd, and plant parent based in Baltimore. Raised by vegetarians in Ohio, they spent twelve years in New York City making theatre and Jewish ritual in synagogues, black box theatres, living rooms, and rented church basements. As a Jewish educator, Lisa has worked in large communities like Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope Brooklyn and Adas Israel Congregation in DC, as well as innovative start-ups such as Malkhut and the Wandering Jews of Astoria in Queens. Their storytelling projects have been featured at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Company, Mission to (dit) Mars, Dixon Place, Project Y, and have been funded by the Queens Council of the Arts. Lisa has also published personal essays about Jewish identity and pop culture in Hey Alma and Tor.com. They received maggid ordination in 2021.
José de Kwaadsteniet finished her studies in theology in 1986, being a student of Rabbi Yehuda Aschkenasy, z’’l. After a few years teaching rabbinics at a Dutch university and co-editing a book about the Shema, With Unbounded Love Have You Loved Us, it turned out her health had other plans with her future. Then, in 2000, she became able to do some studying and teaching again, which she both loves and has done since. After coming out as a Jew in 2014, she teaches Torah and midrash to people who are also in the process of converting to Judaism. She is a member of the progressive Jewish congregation Beit Ha’Chidush in Weesp/Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Cyrise Beatty Schachter was ordained as a maggidah by Maggidah Debra Zaslow and Rabbi David Zaslow in 2021 and as a teacher of Jewish meditation in 2004. She has led Jewish communities as musical director, Shaliach Tzibur, and rabbinic assistant for the past twenty-five years. She holds an MFA in writing from San Francisco State University and has been published in several anthologies. She is the founder of Living Language, a summer immersion program in creative writing for girls. Cyrise teaches classes in music, Judaism/feminist theology, and hip-hop dance from her home base in Ashland, Oregon, and across the country.
Cassandra Sagan has devoted her life to helping others access their creative brilliance. A twice-ordained maggid in the lineage of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and ultimately the Baal Shem Tov, she is a consummate cultural creative: educator, poet, singer/songwriter, visual artist, an InterPlay leader, creator of Moving Midrash, an embodied Torah study practice, and a regular “Joy Gevalt.” She has been published in a wide variety of anthologies and journals, and taught in classrooms, synagogues, libraries, and retreat centers for most of her life. Cassandra weaves her tales with humor and magical realism, while making ancestral tikkunim (repairs) through her characters and story lines.
Batya Podos received maggid ordination from Rabbi David Zaslow and Maggidah Devorah Zaslow in 2012. She directs Congregation Nahalat Shalom’s education program in Albuquerque, where she brings stories to life in the classroom and the Jewish community. She was co-mother of Abraham’s Tent, an interfaith summer camp for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim children. She served on the faculty of the Jewish Spiritual Education program and co-directed the RISE Storytelling Initiative. She is the director of the NM Jewish Storytelling Festival. Her first novel, Rebecca and the Talisman of Time, was nominated for the Oregon Spirit Book Award. Her second novel, B’one Deep, came out on Amazon in 2024.
Ayala Sarah Zonnenschein was ordained as a maggidah in 2014 by Maggidah Devorah Zaslow and Rabbi David Zaslow. Since then, she has been part of the leadership team at Congregation Havurah Shir Hadash in Ashland, Oregon, leading/co-leading Shabbat and holiday services and telling Jewish stories. She was the executive director of Havurah Shir Hadash for twelve years. She now resides in Israel.
Melissa Carpenter, at the turn of the millennium, fell in love—with the Torah. She started writing and delivering Torah monologues at P’nai Or of Portland, Oregon; took biblical Hebrew at her alma mater; and began sharing her own commentary in her weekly blog, Questioning Torah. In 2009, she completed ALEPH’s two-year Davennen Leadership Training Institute to improve her lay leadership, and in 2012 she was ordained as a maggidah by Debra Gordon Zaslow and Rabbi David Zaslow. Today Melissa is still writing her blog, teaching a class on the Torah, and telling Torah stories.
Rivkah Coburn has been weaving Jewish storytelling into her teaching and leadership as long as she can remember. As a dancer, choreographer, and Jewish embodiment facilitator, Rivkah’s storytelling style infuses a magical physical quality with the sacred, delighting the inner child of any age. Thirteen years after receiving ordination as a maggidah from Rabbi David Zaslow and Maggidah Debra Gordon Zaslow, with blessings from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and the Holy One’s help, Rivkah received her rabbinic smicha in January 2025, through the same lineage of the ALEPH Ordination Program.