Gabrielle Ariella Kaplan-Mayer

Gabrielle Ariella Kaplan-Mayer is an author, educator and spiritual director whose work focuses on spirituality, creativity and disability. Her personal essays have been featured in Tablet, Shondaland, NBCThink, Wisdom Daily, WHYY and many other publications and she has published several nonfiction books as well as plays for children. Gabrielle is currently working on a memoir about the power of intuition and ongoing conversations with her ancestors. She writes a Substack newsletter called “Journey With The Seasons,” a weekly practice of meditative reading with creative self-expression prompts. Gabrielle holds a BFA in theater and creative writing from Emerson College and an MA in Jewish Studies from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. For the last 12 years, she has held various positions at Jewish Learning Venture —an organization based in the Philadelphia suburbs — and has also been part of the education staff at Congregation Mishkan Shalom, in Philly proper, where she’s been a member for 25 years. She is the proud recipient of the 2022 Covenant Award and currently edits the Jewish Disability Inclusion News. Gabrielle is thrilled to be Ritualwell’s director of virtual content and programs, a position she thinks of as ‘her dream job’’— integrating her passions for creating community, creative ritual, self-expression and spiritual practice and growth.

Essays

Laptop on a table with Join us online on the screen.

Can We ‘Hold Each Other’ Online?

March 17, 2025

In Can We ‘Hold Each Other’ Online? Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer explores the community created through Ritualwell’s 15-minute minyan ‘Holding Each Other.’ She shares about the power of a pause in the day for prayer and the opportunity to honor, recognize and see each other, even if community members never meet off line.

Gabrielle Ariella Kaplan-Mayer

Essays

Can We ‘Hold Each Other’ Online?

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