We were profoundly impacted by the commitment, graciousness, and wisdom of our third cohort of Start, which ended at our closing retreat this March.
We sent each other off by bestowing blessings, offering practices for resilience and renewal, and sharing hard-earned wisdom for future cohorts:
"The seeds that you sow are the seeds that you grow -- don't stop sowing." - Rev. Dr. Que English, Not On My Watch
"Your venture doesn't have to be perfect to be powerful, and you don't have to be perfect to be powerful." - Yoshi Silverstein, Mitsui Collective
"Take stock of all your doubts, and set them aside for a moment. And then ask what the next step forward looks like now." - Drew Rau, JOURNEY
We can't wait to begin sharing the successes of this cohort's efforts over the months to come!
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Cyd Weissman (Start Cohort 3) Launches Prototype for New Offering: 'Ritual Guide'
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Our wisdom traditions carry powerful rituals, many of which speak to timeless human needs: processing grief, celebrating birth, or healing from sickness. But a growing number of us are identifying moments in our lives that go unmarked.
Cyd Weissman has been equipping Jews and fellow seekers with the resources to create and share Jewish rituals for over a decade at her startup, Ritualwell.
Cyd's experience in Start, Glean Network's partnership course with Columbia Business School, as well as mentorship from Glean mentor Daniel Epstein, led her to re-frame and hone Ritualwell's new offering, Ritual Guide. We are blessed to have spent the past several months learning with Cyd and are excited to amplify the buzz around the launch of Ritual Guide!
"In less than one hour over Zoom, one of our Ritual Guides helped a customer create an original ritual marking the end of a bout of mental illness, drawing on traditions including spices...
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Celebrations from Our Alumni
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Rabbi Becky Silverstein, Start Cohort 3, was announced this week as a Schusterman Fellow for the Global Leadership Program! (Read more here.) He's also launching a learning series "The Countdown" through the Beyn Kodesh l'Chol Beit Midrash located in Boston, MA, open to all folks who identify as LGBTQ+. Join here >
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Naomi Baine and Rabbi Barry Dolinger, Start Cohort 2, are reinvigorating the ritual and meaning of Passover's bread of affliction while taking a stand and spreading awareness about human trafficking. Their venture, Mitzvah Matzos, launched this spring in Providence, RI! Read more here.
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Cyd Weissman, Start Cohort 3, was featured in a recent episode of the podcast Trending Jewish. What does social entrepreneurship look like in a Jewish context? And can the beit midrash, the Jewish house of study, be reinvented for a new generation of spiritual seeker and Jewish learner? Listen here >
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10 Headlines From our Network
1. Do you have a business idea that excites you and keeps you up at night? Our friends at DoGoodX, an accelerator for Christian, underrepresented social entrepreneurs, have opened applications for the DO GOOD X 8-week Startup Accelerator!
2. 5 rituals that spark creativity at Pinterest, Flipboard, and Amazon. Rituals for Work co-authors Dr. Kursat Ozenc, Start Cohort 2, and Margaret Hagan, share 5 rituals for sparking creativity from their newly-released book.
3. Save the world or savor it? Father Greg Boyle, Founder of Homeboy Industries, shares that ministry focused on saving the world leads to burnout and depletion. Our choice is always the same: save the world or savor it.
4. Deus Ex Machina: Religions Use Robots to Connect with the Public. "Robots might become more than just tools. One possibility is that religion gets radically reformulated..."
5. 'Nones' now as big as evangelicals, Catholics in the U.S. Americans identifying with 'no religion' has grown to 23% of the population.
6. Rural churches can thrive beyond numbers. "In many small-church contexts, numerical growth is next to impossible. But that doesn't mean that the pastors or congregations are failures. I've heard many stories of small ministries succeeding -- measured not by the numbers but by the impact of their work."
7. Workism Is Making Americans Miserable. "The decline of traditional faith in America has coincided with an explosion of new atheisms. Some people worship beauty, some worship political identities, and others worship their children. But everybody worships something. And workism is among the most potent of the new religions competing for congregants."
8. The Happiness Recession. In 2018, happiness among young adults in America fell to a record low.
9. Chaplaincy Without Religion. Our friends at the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab are hosting a webinar on the unique role of chaplains to provide spiritual care to the non-religious.
10. Can A Digital Sacrament Still Impart Divine Grace? "We began our work to create a devotional, virtual, ecumenical experience of Communion for believers to explore - as centuries of Christians have before - how changes in tech affect discipleship and faith."
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