Bøker av Haviva Ner-David

When we first meet Nomi, she is gazing out the window of an airplane taking her from the kibbutz that's been home all her adult life, to Massachusetts, which she has not seen since she left after a traumatic fallout with her parents in high school. Her only sister and nephew were found mysteriously dead in their big farmhouse on the outskirts of Salem, and her widowed mother is suffering from dementia in a nursing home nearby. Recently widowed herself, and childless, Nomi, at sixty, still grapples with the consequences of the event that sent her into exile as a teenager. She hasn't seen her mother in forty years and fears it's too late to heal wounds that have festered far too long. She simply wants to settle her sister's estate, make sure her mother's safe, and return to her safe kibbutz life. What seems like a straightforward mission is complicated by the mystery of her sister's death, the plight of a pregnant teenager rejected by her Orthodox Jewish parents, and John, the sympathetic police officer who befriends her. The old farmhouse Nomi inherits from her sister also holds mysteries, and maybe a ghost, of its own. To Die in Secret weaves interlocking threads of a richly complex tale of trauma, parenting, and forgiveness, as succeeding generations face horrific situations and unimaginable choices and struggle to find the hope and faith to carry on.

Meet Yonah, a quirky kid obsessed with fish, who is about to start kindergarten. The day before school starts, Yonah's parents take her to the mikveh, a ritual immersion pool, to mark her transition from preschool to kindergarten. When her brother, who also went to the mikveh when he was starting kindergarten, tells her she'll love the fish at the mikveh, she is excited to go. But when she goes into the pool to dunk, she can't find the fish. Was her brother just teasing? Read Yonah and the Mikveh Fish to find out!Yonah and the Mikveh Fish was born from the desire of Rabbi Haviva Ner-David and Cantor Rachel Stock Spilker, both involved in the open mikveh movement, to introduce the ritual of full body mikveh immersion to children and their families. Mikveh is an experiential and meaningful option for people of all ages to mark transitions, significant occasions, and life cycle events. Over the past twenty years, there has been a mikveh renaissance in the progressive Jewish world. Open community mikvaot (plural of mikveh)-where people can immerse how and when they choose-are popping up around the globe. By following lovable Yonah at the mikveh as she prepares for kindergarten, children and adults will begin, we hope, to imagine going to the mikveh themselves.

Dreaming Against the Current is Haviva Ner-David's spiritual, psychological, and emotional journey from Orthodox Jewish feminist activist to post-denominational inter-spiritual rabbi/minister. The journey begins with Haviva's religious crisis as a rabbi in Israel during the summer of "Operation Protective Edge" (the Israeli operation in Gaza in 2014), and ends with her interfaith-interspiritual ordination and certification as a spiritual companion, at Riverside Church in NYC. But it also begins with a restrictive childhood growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home in suburban New York, and ends with her skinny dipping on Yom Kippur morning.Interwoven with her highly personal and profound dream interpretation, Haviva takes us on a deep exploration of her path toward claiming her inner free spirit that had been trying to make herself heard since childhood. She battles anorexia as a teenager; spends years struggling to be ordained as an Orthodox rabbi; dares to evolve while remaining a committed life partner; adopts a child when she already has plenty of biological children; moves to politically complex and highly segregated Israel and raises seven children there with no regular extended family support. All while living with a degenerative genetic muscular disorder.Haviva learns that healing our sacred wounds and believing in unconditional universal Divine Love (for ourselves and others) are the most challenging yet the most vital keys to owning and celebrating our most essential and authentic selves. Dreaming Against the Current will resonate with people searching for their own unique spiritual and general life paths, whether raised in more traditional religious environments and seeking less traditional ways to listen to their souls, or not.