Every month, we hold this calming and reflective morning session. Our Monthly Meditative Morning Prayer is accessible to all. If you would like to join others to greet the new day with awe, serenity, and love, this is for you. No experience with meditation is required. Curious beginners are very welcome.
Our Monthly Meditative Morning Prayer is led by Hebrew Priestess Batya Diamond.
About Kohenet Batya Diamond:
Batya is a songwriter, mystic, teacher, and spiritual leader. A native of Brooklyn, NY, her earliest days at Hebrew day school inspired her love of Jewish learning, music, and ritual. She originally came to the Island as a summer resident, soon finding her way to the Hebrew Center. She and her family moved to the Island full-time during the pandemic.
She is a skilled communicator with a sense of humor and an ordained Hebrew Priestess or Kohenet. This title refers to those who trained at the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute to serve their community through a specific lens. In her prayer and music, her perspective is “progressive, feminist, and earth-based.”
She says, “What’s always been missing for me, in traditional Judaism, was the feminine voice,” she said. “When I study Torah, where there is an opportunity to raise up any feminine voices…I know if I’m speaking on that Shabbat, I will be talking about the feminist viewpoint.”
She writes, records, and performs original songs and chants, weaving ancient wisdom with accessible teachings in English and Hebrew. At our monthly meditative morning prayer and beyond, she brings an easeful, attentive presence.