ReTreat Yourself! Ramah Darom Edition

Eliana Light is cultivating a more connected world by making the urgent spiritual wisdom of Jewish liturgy and prayer practice (t’fillah) accessible and meaningful through her prayer leadership, consulting, teaching, and the Light Lab, a center for t’fillah education. Eliana has shared her unique “t’fillahsophy” as faculty at national Jewish education and songleading conferences, as a guest teacher at Hebrew Union College, the Jewish Theological Seminary, the Academy for Jewish Religion, and Limmud, and at synagogues, day schools, camps, and communities across North America. ORAH HI, her fourth album of playful, thoughtful original Jewish music, was released in fall 2023. In 2023, she was awarded the Covenant Foundation’s Pomegranate Prize and is the 2025 Covenant Foundation Family Education Fellow. Eliana earned her Master’s in Jewish Experiential Education from JTS in 2016 and is based in Durham, NC.

Coleen Dieker performs at a high level on a wide variety of instruments: piano, guitar, flute, ukulele, and violin. She is also an accomplished composer and arranger, a gift she has employed in various roles, including as a music director in the non-secular world. Her past projects include Ensemble Iberica, which explores the traditional music of Spain and Portugal. She has also collaborated and performed with Jessica Paige, Making Movies, Nick Marshall, The Steamboat Bandits, and Ayllu. She currently performs with Flannigan’s Right Hook, a high-energy rock/bluegrass/Celtic band. She also writes, records, and tours with acclaimed Jewish singer/songwriter Rabbi Josh Warshawsky.

Rabba Rori Picker Neiss serves as the Senior Vice President for Community Relations at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA). Prior to that, she was Executive Director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis, an organization committed to a vibrant and secure Jewish community in a thriving and just St. Louis region, after previously serving as a member of the clergy team at Bais Abraham Congregation, a Modern Orthodox Jewish synagogue in University City, Missouri. Rori is one of the first graduates of Yeshivat Maharat, a pioneering institution training Orthodox Jewish women to be spiritual leaders and halakhic (Jewish legal) authorities. She is a David Hartman Center fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, a CLAL Rabbis Without Borders fellow, and co-editor of “InterActive Faith: The Essential Interreligious Community-Building Handbook”. She serves on the Board of Directors for HIAS and the Parliament of the World’s Religions. Rori is married to Russel Neiss, a software engineer, and they have three children.