Literary Modiin - July 2023 Author Event

About the authors:

Daisy Alpert Florin attended Dartmouth College and received graduate degrees from Columbia University and Bank Street Graduate School of Education. She was a recipient of the 2016 Kathryn Gurfein Writing Fellowship at Sarah Lawrence College and was a 2019–20 fellow in the BookEnds novel revision fellowship.. Her debut novel MY LAST INNOCENT YEAR was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Washington Post Staff Pick. A native New Yorker, Daisy lives in Connecticut with her family. 

Maxim D. Shrayer, bilingual author, scholar, and translator, is a Professor at Boston College. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and a winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Shrayer’s many books include Waiting for America, A Russian Immigrant, and Of Politics and Pandemics. Shrayer’s works have been translated into eleven languages. Visit his website at www.shrayer.com.

Rabbi Haviva Ner-David is a writer, rabbi, and activist. In 2006 she became the first woman to publicly receive Orthodox rabbinic ordination, only to leave Orthodoxy and call herself a post-denominational rabbi. Ten years later, she received interfaith ordination from the One Spirit Interfaith-Interspiritual Seminary and now goes by post-denominational inter-spiritual rabbi. With a doctorate on Mikveh and an MFA in Creative Writing, she is the author of three spiritual journey memoirs -- Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Towards Traditional Rabbinic Ordination; Chanah's Voice: A Rabbi Struggles with Gender, Commandment, and the Women's Rituals of Baking, Bathing and Brightening; and Dreaming Against the Current: A Rabbi's Soul Journey --  two novels -- Hope Valley and To Die in Secret, which she will talk about today -- and the children's book, Yonah and the Mikveh Fish. Founding rabbi of Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body and Soul on Kibbutz Hannaton in the Lower Galilee (the only mikveh in Israel open to all to immerse as they choose), she officiates and helps create on-site personalized immersion ritual ceremonies and facilitates group mikveh workshops. As a spiritual companion, she works with individuals and couples and specializes in dreamwork, inner child work, and nature soul work, as well as general sacred listening. Haviva is active in building a shared society among Palestinian and Jewish Israelis and lives in Hannaton with her life partner, Jacob, and those of their seven children who are not yet out of the house, as well as their dog and cat. She also lives with a degenerative genetic muscular disease called FSHD, which has been one of her greatest teachers.