Offerings
Rabbi May is available to build personalized rituals for your life cycle moments and transitions, create new liturgy that speaks to your lived experiences, tutor and officiate b’nai mitzvah, consult about forming values aligned faith communities and decoupling Judaism from Zionism in your personal or communal practice, and join your community as a guest prayer leader or teacher. Contact Rabbi May to get started.
Consulting
Rabbi May is a community builder. A rabbi, organizer, chaplain, and musician, she has worked in various group settings and knows what it takes to build a cohesive community rooted in values. After forming the Person of Color Havurah at Kol Tzedek Synagogue, she began consulting with Jews of Color around the country, supporting them in building their own havurot.
Rabbi May also has expertise in building community at the intersection of spirituality and politics.
She has been doing this work as the inaugural rabbi of Mending Minyan. She has consulted with Jews and Christians and is interested in working with people of all and no faith to explore the intersection of spirituality and politics.
Rabbi May is available to consult about forming values aligned faith communities and decoupling Judaism from Zionism in your personal or communal practice.
“When I reached out to May for support in taking my small justice-oriented Christian congregation to the next level, I was hoping for a secret that would solve all my problems. Instead, she guided me back again and again to some simple truths: Be honest. Build your people’s leadership, and trust them to lead. And there are no shortcuts to good organizing.
May helped me see the strengths that were already alive in the group, and offered multiple models for structures that could use our strengths to address our weaknesses. But ultimately what she brought was not easy solutions but deep questions, encouragement, and a stronger sense of solidarity with other communities engaged in similar growth and change. ”
— Pastor Jay Bergen
Ritual & Liturgy Creation
Rabbi May’s approach to liturgy and ritual creation is to help you feel fully seen and reflected in what we create collaboratively. We can create rituals and liturgy for moments our ancestors could not have dreamed of! Whether she is helping support you through a gender transition, naming a baby with gender neutral pronouns, in your non-traditional wedding ceremony, or in any other marking of a life cycle moment or transition.
Rabbi May seeks to ground her work in tradition while making it relevant to the present. Her work seeks to allow all parts of ourselves to be honored and embraced equally.
Rabbi May is available to work with you to create a ritual and/or liturgy for any meaningful life cycle event or transitional moment. She is also available to officiate your life cycle ceremony. She looks forward to working with you.
“On Yom Kippur 2018, May wrote and led a powerful Martyrology service for Tzedek Chicago in memory of Gazans who were killed by the Israeli military during the Great Return March - a nonviolent Palestinian protest that took place weekly on the Gaza-Israeli border. Her brave, poetic and powerful liturgy was one of the high points of our High Holiday service that year - one that still resonates deeply for our community.”
— Rabbi Brant Rosen
Speaking & Teaching
Rabbi May is an engaging speaker and teacher. Her divrei torah (sermons) are politically relevant and deeply rooted in spirituality. As a teacher and facilitator she likes to involve her audience in discussions and make room for all voices and perspectives. As a prayer leader she enjoys incorporating music from across the diaspora and building custom prayer experiences. Rabbi May is warm, creative, and approachable.
Rabbi May is available to teach and speak on different topics including but not limited to:
How to build a values aligned community
Racial justice in spiritual spaces
Creating your own ritual and liturgy
She is available to visit your community as a prayer leader and to offer guest divrei torah (sermons). She is also available to tutor and officiate b’nai mitzvah.
“I would just like to share some words of gratitude for your work, starting with the heroic May Ye. Thank you and bless you May, for being a space opener, for your magnificent capacity to evoke deep permission in each of us to talk to God from the bottom of our hearts. Your teachings extend beyond your words. My deepest thanks for your work and your heart.”
— Anonymous participant from Rabbi May’s class “Creating Our Own Ritual and Liturgy”