Kallah

Kallah 2023 Red Tent

The ALEPH Kallah is honored to announce the first-ever ALEPH Kallah Red Tent! 

Inspired by Anita Diamant’s bestselling novel, “The Red Tent”, the Red Tent refers back to our ancestors when the women of Jacob’s tribe were required by law to take refuge during menstruation and birth.

The modern Red Tent movement focuses on creating Sacred Feminine spaces for women to share stories, rest, and gain strength to meet the challenges of time and daily lives. Founded by Alisa Starkweather in 2006, The Red Tent Temple Movement is a grassroots movement for women to gather to honor all stages of womanhood.

With purposeful acknowledgement to the variety of gender identities present at Kallah, the Kallah Red Tent is intentionally designed to be a physical space of respite, prioritizing the needs of folks of marginalized genders, including but not limited to: *cis and trans women and nonbinary folks. There will be programming for people of all genders, which includes cis and trans men during designated times, with the expectation and understanding that the experiences of those with marginalized gender identities will be centered. There will be both programmed and unprogrammed time in the Red Tent for folks of all genders. Check the schedule to see which programs are for you.

We are grateful to community members of all genders for your sensitivity to and respect for the need for this new kind of sacred space at the Kallah. *Click here for information about gender and pronoun language.

The Kallah Red Tent will serve as one of the physical spaces for rest and renewal–our co-created sacred spaces. Our space will literally become our Red Tent: we’ll be indoors to ensure we’re protected from the summer heat, and the space will be adorned with decoration and symbolism to generate the energy of a Red Tent.

We’ll form an interconnectedness among our souls by offering both informal gathering as well as formal programming. In this space, we’ll be able to connect with folks of all genders and explore the richness and depth of our unique experiences, with an emphasis on healing and the Sacred Feminine.

As this will be the very first Kallah Red Tent, we’re inviting you to join us in the co-creation of this sacred space. We are convening a support team to:

• Co-create: Design and literally build and decorate the space
• Steward: Tend, clean, hold the container during the week
• Lead: Offer thematically-aligned programming for folks of specific or all genders and experiences of the Sacred Feminine (e.g. rituals, davening, celebration, divination, etc.)

We welcome all who are interested in any of the above Kallah Red Tent roles to volunteer and those with marginalized gender identities will be prioritized.

The ALEPH Kallah is an impactful week of spaciousness and richness rolled into just a few short days, and the Kallah Red Tent will serve as a container that holds and lifts up voices that have been often overlooked and unfortunately, silenced. We’ll bear witness to our experience and honor our impact, with reverence, care, and celebration. All are invited, whether to lead a program or come just to sit in this space and be present.

*For clarification: The Kallah Red Tent is a physical space at Kallah. This is different from the afternoon class, PM205: Women as Guardians of Culture: Sacred Water, Sacred Blood | An Embodied, Experiential Exploration of Menarche, Menopause, and Mikvah Rituals in an Intergenerational Red Tent with Kohenet Ruach D’vorah Grenn, Ph.D. and Kohenet Annie Matan, which will be held in this space. For more information on this class and who the class is for, visit www.aleph.org/kallah/classes.

To offer a program or learn more about the Kallah Red Tent, please reach out to Kallah Red Tent Coordinator, Kohenet Annie Matan, at contact@anniematan.com.