Alicia Jo Rabins

Structure and Spirit: Alicia Jo Rabins on Art, Heritage, and Ancestral Religion

Season 1
Episode 6

My guest for Episode 6, Alicia Jo Rabins, of Jewish ancestry, is a writer, musician, performer, ritualist and Torah teacher. She is the author of poetry books Divinity School (winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize) and Fruit Geode (finalist for the Jewish Book Award) and has released three albums with Girls in Trouble, her songwriting project about Biblical women. She is currently at work on an independent film, "A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff." The recipient of a 2020 Oregon Literary Fellowship, Rabins lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children.

Things discussed:

Being drawn to ancestral religious practices.

Reconnecting to cultural traditions even after several generations of assimilation.

Re-examining the biases against organized religion.

How organized religion can root us.

Art as a means to explore religious experience.

Embracing the roots of our adopted country in addition to our ancestral one.

Emotional challenges of motherhood.

Struggles of the writing life.

Teaching children about their heritage.

Raising children with ancestral traditions.

Resources: