About Me

My photo
Joy Serves G*d in Joy as a passionate performing percussionist, poet, publisher, photographer, publicist, sound healer, spiritual guide, artist, gardener and Gemini. "Ivdu Et Hashem B'Simcha" -Psalm 100:2 ....... Joy Krauthammer, active in the Jewish Renewal, Feminist, and neo-Chasidic worlds for over three decades, kabbalistically leads Jewish women's life-cycle rituals. ... Workshops, and Bands are available for all Shuls, Sisterhoods, Rosh Chodeshes, Retreats, Concerts, Conferences & Festivals. ... My kavanah/intention is that my creative expressive gifts are inspirational, uplifting and joyous. In gratitude, I love doing mitzvot/good deeds, and connecting people in joy. In the zechut/merit of Reb Shlomo Carlebach, zt'l, I mamash love to help make our universe a smaller world, one REVEALING more spiritual consciousness, connection, compassion, and chesed/lovingkindness; to make visible the Face of the Divine... VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE and enjoy all offerings.... For BOOKINGS write: joyofwisdom1 at gmail.com, leave a COMMENT below, or call me. ... "Don't Postpone Joy" bear photo montage by Joy. Click to enlarge. BlesSings, Joy

Friday, May 20, 2011

Joy's U Tubes & other websites

Visions ~ Bits & Pieces of Joy


Aviva & menorahs
© Joy Krauthammer
You Tubes by Joy
These first 2 U Tubes I created make me happy to view them. 
They, too, are my Visions of Joy. Enjoy Happy Chanukah and Edith's Persimmon Drying. 


Happy Chanukah  1:35
by Joy Krauthammer, Joy to the World
12/9/2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckGPO9i8xtE&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

                                 ~ ~ ~

Edith & persimmons
© Joy Krauthammer

Edith & Hachiyah Persimmon Drying with Joy   2:31
by Joy Krauthammer, Joy to the World
11/1/10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J023-ZFfCpM

                                 ~ ~ ~


SHORT RIDE TO HEAVEN
A Photo Story


"PERSIMMON Drying" You Tube by Joy Krauthammer 
is published in Persimmon TreeSpring 2012
an Online Magazine of the Arts by Women Over Sixty

Take a look and enjoy the magazine. 
Direct link: 

 ~ ~ ~
YAY
PUBLISHED


More
RIPPLE REFLECTIONS #2 WITH JOY  9 minutes

RR #2 & FLOATING FLOWERS Trailer  1 1/2 minutes

RIPPLE REFLECTIONS 1 WITH JOY  2 minutes

~ ~ ~


JOY DRUMS THE BLUES

~ ~ ~



I traveled to visit my grandbaby in rainy Maryland from sunny California, and I shot CITYSCAPES. As a member of 52 Frames photo group, this was our week's theme. Turned several photos into a short slide show. 1:34  
Likes and Comments are always appreciated.
~ ~ ~

Enjoy OTHER WEBSITES
a compilation on the ecstasy of Joy


Joy & ribboned timbrel
PERCUSSION IS MY PASSION
Lev Eisha May 2011 Newsletter
http://www.leveisha.org/archive/0411_leveisha.htm

                                 ~ ~ ~


Joy, Sister Ann Catherine, John

Sister Ann Catherine and her brother John 
A little illustrated story about my friend
in the Ahavat Torah newsletter.
http://www.ahavattorahcongregation.org/Ahavat%20Torah%20-%20Archive%20Newsletters/Ahavat%20Torah%20Newsletter%20-%20January%2001,%202011.pdf


AN OPEN LETTER TO JOY KRAUTHAMMER
We had a marvelous service last Shabbat, December 25th, at our synagogue. I mentioned last week in our
newsletter, “Just imagine, some people will come to celebrate Christmas and find us celebrating Shabbat!”

We were not too far from that scene. We had great prayer and music with Kimberly
Haynes, ethics discussion with the ethicists among us, in-depth prayer teaching by Rabbi
Miriam, Torah teaching was by Rabbinic Intern Susan Nanus, Torah chanting by Vivian
Gold, and many dear ones who attended, congregants, guests, and many friends. 
But we also had a special guest, Sister Ann Catherine, her brother John, and our beloved friend
Joy Krauthammer. It was amazing to me that during the Christian “High Holy Day” of
Christmas, Sister Ann Catherine, chose to be with Ahavat Torah Congregation. She not
only participated in the prayer service, but also played the timbrels together with Joy, who
played the drum. Joy wrote: “She was a maven timbrelist.” Sister Ann Catherine wrote, “It
was such a sacred experience ~ a gift of God to have this opportunity to serve as a music
minister. This was a first in my life!”

For all of us, it was an amazing experience with many sheheheyanu moments, as Joy wrote. I thought the
Mashiah is truly around the corner. Seeing Sister Ann Catherine in her habit playing the timbrel with such great joy on Shabbat (Christmas) at our synagogue. Indeed, Praise G*d from whom all blessings flow!” said Sister AnnCatherine. May Adonai bestow upon us that we may share many more such Sheheheyanu moment experiences.

Amen! Thank you Joy for bringing your friends, now ours. Rabbi Miriam

~ ~ ~

GARDEN OF JOY
Barlow Foundation newsletter Spring 2009 v9 i1, page 6.
http://www.barlow2000.org/newsletters/barlow_news_spr09.pdf
My blooming purple bearded irises are a low opacity vision beneath articles on the Barlow pages. - Joy

Friend, AriellaShira Lewis spontaneously joined me, driving separately along many freeways, until we arrived at downtown's Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Elysium Park (where we got lost at Dodger Stadium and Caesar Chavez Ravine), filled with 100 year old trees. AriellaShira was in her white goddess gown and high heels, when I asked if she'd join me in this venture. She did not hesitate, because she is a traveling mitzvah angel. I had fifty purple bearded irises and bags of dirt to plant and beautify the hospital. She planted in three different gardens. Patients with their respirators and medical staff, sit outside learning on the main lobby porch facing dirt and some greenery.

I found a gardener and had him fix and test the sprinklers. AriellaShira and I planted, with our knees on brown bags. During Marcel's, z'l, six months of difficult life support, he was at this hospital for two months, Sept. and October. Marcel had been president of the Trudeau Society of Pulmonary Physicians of the LA Lung Society, and I knew that when he ran meetings at Barlow (from the other side of the bed) he appreciated the fish meal they served because he ate kosher. AriellaShira's husband also is in the same field, and thus had an additional reason for this mitzvah we did. AriellaShira has visited Marcel in many hospitals and was present when we buried him and at the matzeivah / gravestone unveiling.  We share the hiddur mitzvah of beautifying the grounds for patients and staff.

 I write this on Sephirot Counting of the Omer day 40, Hod sh b'Yesod. I am reminded that this holy act of love and gratitude deals with the foundation of bonding and creation. It is a purification for me to recognize the refinement of my soul as we travel toward Mt. Sinai and Shavuot.  Today is a good day to write because Marcel visited me last night while I slept. He looked well, Baruch Hashem.
  - Joy Krauthammer

"Dr. Marcel Krauthammer, a pulmonologist and a renowned professor of medicine at UCLA, passed away in January 2006. His wife, Joy, planted lovely purple bearded irises at the Barlow main hospital in his memory. The bulbs became a wonderful improvement to the hospital grounds, and have since multiplied, and return year after year in spectacular bloom. The Garden of Joy, as it’s been affectionately named by the staff, blooms beautifully, even in the cold of winter. It brings smiles to the staff and warms the heart and brings hope to our patients and their families."
- Barlow Foundation


Garden of Joy - Barlow Hospital
donated in memory of Marcel Krauthammer, z'l
Garden of Joy  - Barlow Hospital
donated in memory of Marcel Krauthammer, z'l
AriellaShira Lewis - chaplain dep't
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RABBI STAN LEVY'S TALLIT
Rabbi Stan Levy & ribboned tallit
© Joy Krauthammer

It made me very happy that I could contribute to the Tallit being created for B'nai Horin's Rabbi Stan Levy.

The ribbon design (by others) of the tallit was based on my own woven-in ribbon adorned tallit which I had designed and co-created with my friend, Ruth Zitch, z'l, (based on the Sephirot and Reb Zalman's colors of days of creation).  Reb Stan's Tallit was also based on my ribbon adorned timbrel. Each free-flowing ribbon attached to my timbrel was written and filled with blesSings from friends around the world. This is what inspired the designers of Rabbi Stan's Tallit. His ribbons are on the tallit.

I helped with others in the holy job to tie the Tzitzit on the Tallit.
It was a great event when we presented the Tallit to Rabbi Stan, founder and rabbi of B'nai Horin.
- Joy Krauthammer

http://www.bnaihorin.com/about-us/sacred-objects/

 ~ ~ ~

SHUL TRIPPINGa nostalgic hippie tours the alternative scene
by Roberto Loiderman,  October 11, 2007,  Jewish Journal

http://www.jewishjournal.com/community_briefs/page4/shul_tripping_a_nostalgic_hippie_tours_the_alternative_scene_20071012/

excerpted from a lengthy story:
Joy
© Suzanne Roth
When I met Joy Krauthammer, 60, at Lev Eisha -- where she plays percussion -- I had already heard about her. "Joy's a drummer, a musician," someone had told me, "a woman with deep soul.... She's involved in everything." 

Everything and more. Joy was at B'nai Horin's Tashlich service by the Pacific, where she twirled on the sand. Wearing a rainbow-colored tie-dyed floppy cap with a big yellow sunflower, she waded into the ocean with bits of bread. Later, she invited me to a gathering of Sarah's Tent, a group that explores creative Jewish spirituality. 


I saw Joy again at Makom Ohr Shalom's Yom Kippur services and once more at Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue's Sukkot Torah study. When I asked her about having run into her so many times, she wrote me in an e-mail that I could have also seen her at other places of worship, as well.

Joy goes to many places because she finds beauty and comfort in each. Full of adoration for ecstatic Judaism, brimming with love for the rabbis who dedicate themselves to the teachings she soaks up, Joy reminds me of God-drunk people I'd meet while doing the ashram-crawl in India nearly 40 years ago. 

Joy did her own version of the ashram-crawl. In 1960s New York, she "hung out" with Hare Krishnas and followers of Swami Satchidananda: "G-d came to me in the mid-1980s and revealed something I had never known, the Divine Presence," she wrote me. "Yes, I recognize it when it happens. Every moment in my garden. Surely in shul when I am playing for the congregations to bring them to praise the source of all blessings. G-d gave this gift to me. I had asked for it and I received it ... I have been danced. I have been sung. I have been drummed ... I have asked to be able to hear and listen more carefully." 

I suspect that Joy has a faith gene I don't have. While her soul resonates with the beauty in all the places she goes to, I go to the same places and focus on what jars my soul.

Still, there was one more place to go, and it would put me in the presence of the man who started the Renewal movement.
~
"I loved meeting reporter, Roberto Loiderman, and loved what he wrote here, and I love his other stories. Reading what Roberto wrote, affirms what I stand for."
- Joy Krauthammer
~ ~ ~

It thrills me to see that the interview on Renewal Judaism that I had with Professor Chava Weissler was published in:

Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues 1995 (c) 2005 pg.53-83

http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/nashim/v010/10.1weissler.html

and has been included and revised in anthologies:
Women Remaking American Judaism by Riv-Ellen Prell  page 50   (see below Nashim)

Reprinted from:
Meanings of Shekhinah in the "Jewish Renewal" Movement 
by Chava Weissler 
Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues - Number 10, Fall 5766/2006, pp. 53-83

Indiana University Press 

Chava Weissler - Meanings of Shekhinah in the "Jewish Renewal" Movement - Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues 10 Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women's Studies & Gender Issues 10 (2005) 53-83 Meanings Of Shekhinah In The "Jewish Renewal" Movement Chava Weissler "Jewish Renewal is Hasidism meets feminism." Rabbi David Wolfe-Blank "Renewal is a well-spring of women's energy." Nan Fink Geffen "God is coming through the women this time." Barbara Breitman Encountering a feminist conception of God can transform a life. 


In Los Angeles during the 1980s, Joy Krauthammer encountered feminism through the Los Angeles Jewish Feminist Center, with such Jewish Renewal teachers as Savina Teubal and Sue Elwell, and later with Judith Halevy. "Feminism gave me the ability to worship a God who isn't the Lord. . . . I can pray to the Source of All Blessings." Not long after, she began to attend the Aleph Kallah (the biennial week-long gathering of Renewal Jews) and Elat Chayyim (the Jewish Spiritual Retreat Center), where she learned how to shape her spiritual practice to her new understanding of divinity:


Dancing Joy
© Shira Solomon
 I start the morning by greeting the sun. . . . I go out in my bare feet and dance in the garden as the sun is coming up, and say the Modah Ani [a prayer said on awakening]. I learned it from Shefa Gold at the Kallah in 1993. I learned that I could be free and liberated to express myself in ways I didn't know I could.


 A spiritual seeker for most of her adult life, as well as a musician, photographer, and artist, this woman, coming from a secular Jewish background and married to an Orthodox man, had been involved in both Hare Krishna and Chabad (Lubavitch hasidism) before settling into Jewish Renewal in the early 1990-1. While she still maintains connections with the Orthodox and Chabad communities, Krauthammer is so identified with the Jewish Renewal movement that she introduced herself to me by saying. "I am Renewal!" In addition to her work with women teachers, Krauthammer formed deep connections with such male Renewal leaders as Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Shlomo Carlebach, David Zeller, and Stan Levy.
~


from Women Remaking American Judaism by Riv-Ellen Prell:
For the artists of Jewish Renewal, Shekhinah is far more than a metaphor. This essay began with the words of Joy Krauthammer, a spiritual seeker who is an artist and a musician. For the past four years, among her other activities, Krauthammer has been the percussionist at Lev Eisha (Heart of a Woma, the Los Angeles women's Minyan, meeting monthly "with about 150 ruach-filled, singing, Miriayahm dancing, praying, learning, sharing women."


"I am gratefl to the Source of All BlesSings, as Rabbi David Wolfe-Blank, z'l, taught me to call the Holy One."
- Joy Krauthammer, Jan. 24, 2003


"I study Orthodox and Chabad, and davven Renewal." Jan 16, 2005. 

 - Joy Krauthammer
.
~ ~ ~

7 comments:

  1. wow

    I just went into the websites

    You are a one woman tribal village. Amazing stuff, Joy. You are indeed an amazing person.
    Very unusual that so much can cascade out of one person.

    All the best,

    Jack

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love, love, LOVE your persimmon video / music.
    Julie

    ReplyDelete
  3. Gloria OrensteinMay 4, 2012 at 2:46 PM

    Dear Joy,
    Your film in Persimmon Tree for their final issue (with this editorial group) was just beautiful.
    How creative you are!!! It was so joyous. So Lovely. So appropriate.
    What an incredible woman with those persimmons! All wonderful.
    Thanks so much.
    Love, Gloria

    ReplyDelete
  4. From Persimmon Tree

    Malinda Crispin
    09 Apr 2012,
    Thank you, Joy, for this gift.
    My sister sends me dried persimmons from her garden for Christmas, a taste of California in France.
    I'll share your video to inspire her!


    Ann Bridges
    02 Apr 2012,
    Wonderful!!!
    Thanks for sharing this Joy


    ellen
    26 Mar 2012,
    so uplifting
    and happy
    in a sometimes
    not so happy world!
    merci beaucoup
    ellen


    Penny
    24 Mar 2012,
    So colorful!
    Beautiful! Made me desire a persimmon to eat.
    I didn't know about drying them. Wonderful video.


    Sandy Boucher
    17 Mar 2012,
    Really fun.
    Delightful to watch and listen to.
    Sandy

    ReplyDelete
  5. From Persimmon Tree

    Frances Lench
    15 May 2012,
    A very clever & informational video. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ann Bridges
    02 Apr 2012,
    Wonderful!!!
    Thanks for sharing this Joy

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Joy,
    The water ripples, the bird-songs, the gongs all combine to make a hypnotic and meditative work of art that is soothing and lovely.
    Thanks for creating it and sharing it with me.
    love, Jean

    ReplyDelete

Hi,
Welcome to Visions of Joy.
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BlesSings,
Joy