Marisa Baggett
2026

Can a recipe be a sacred text? Chef and storyteller Marisa Baggett offered up a lively, interactive virtual gathering that transforms the kitchen into a space for reflection, discussion, and storytelling. Using kugel as our text, we looked at the everyday act of cooking as a way to pause, reflect, and uncover spiritual ingredients like joy — just in time for Rosh Hashanah. Registrants received Tractate Kugel, a digital companion zine.

Trezlen Drake
2026

Trezlen's capstone is a mapping project showing the diversity and diaspora of Jews of Color (JOCs) and non-Ashkenazic Jews (NAJs) in the US and around the world. She has used a survey to collect information on JOCs and NAJs, using results to create data points on a map to show the diversity and diaspora of JOCs and NAJs. 

Joshua Eisenstat
2026

Joshua's capstone is a popular education zine series, focused on provoking conversations about how money, class, and tzedakah shape Jewish American life. The project includes three zines, with aspirations to create more. One zine, for example, is about Jewish Federations-- how they came to be, why they matter, and how we can learn about their grantmaking. A second zine is focused on creating an unbound "Torah of Money", in reference to an oldie but goodie book written in the 1990s by Jeffrey Dekro and Lawrence Bush.

Rachel Gollay
2026

A 4-song cycle and corresponding song booklet, with chords, lyrics, and commentary. Each song corresponds to a Jewish festival holiday or season. The songs are intended to be shared in communal singing, in Jewish and not-Jewish spaces - gatherings, services, organizing meetings, rallies, etc. Thematically, each song expresses Rachel’s understanding of each holiday's themes through the lens of Unbound Judaism, and Rachel’s own Torah. Check it out at gollay.bandcamp.com/.

Clare Kinberg
2026

In the Spring of 2026 Clare went on book tour to give readings and lead discussions about her book By the Waters of Paradise. Clare spoke in two bookstores, at four synagogues and at two private homes about her experience with American anti-Black racism, being in an interracial family, and how we both perpetrate and challenge racism. Clare’s audiences were mostly white American Jews who want to understand their own family stories.

Karen Levine
2026
My capstone project focused on Counting the Omer, one of my favorite Jewish practices that has grown and developed over the nearly 25 years that I've engaged with it. For my project I rebuilt a website I'd created about ten years ago (https://count.omerjourney.net/). I also set up a dedicated Substack (https://rabbikarenlevine.substack.com/) for subscribers to receive the daily count — and wrote 50 posts. My presentation included my exploration into the labyrinth motif as a powerful vehicle for spiritual practice in general and Counting the Omer in particular. For my congregation I convened a weekly study session called "The Omer of Creation," where I linked the practice of assigning sephirot to each of the seven weeks of counting — and a combination of sephirot to each day of the Omer — with the seven days of creation.

Sandra Razieli
2026

The Omerathon is a 49-day virtual journey that invites participants to simultaneously embody the qualities of the Omer while exploring the remarkable workings of our amazing brains. Through a series of daily short videos, filmed across the island of Maui, I guide participants through somatic practices that weave together Jewish teachings, and tools from applied neurology, tailored to each day of the Omer. The practice offers an embodied learning experience that is fun, engaging, and meaningful no matter one's prior knowledge of either Jewish or movement practices.

Nick Wymer-Santiago

2026

This capstone project is a calendar of various loaves of Challah, taking several different forms. NIck expanded on the art of making Challah to create both physical representations of Judaism and nature, along with using non-traditional styles. After all, Challah, in its original meaning, describes the ritual of separating a piece of bread initially for the Kohanim, not the literal straightforward braided style many have come to know as Challah.

James M. Branum
2025

Combining his experience as a defense attorney and knowledge of military law, James Branum has created a curriculum about Jewish Conscientious Objection, culminating in a day-long hybrid seminar entitled “Exploring Jewish Conscientious Objection: Past, Present and Future” on August 10, 2025. With James as their guide, participants across ages explored the history, theology, and ethics of Jewish abstention from wartime drafts. James brought together several organizations into this three-part capstone seminar, including the Jewish CO Project, the Spinoza Havurah, and the Joy Mennonite Church of Oklahoma City. You can watch the recorded seminar here, learn more about the Jewish CO Project, and reach out to James to learn more about using his curriculum with youth or adults for synagogue or interfaith education.

Emmett H
2025

Like many other trans and nonbinary folks, Emmett H has felt a lot of fear and insecurity recently. For their capstone project, they wanted to help other trans and nonbinary Jews, especially young people, cope with these feelings. By creating their own sewing pattern, Emmett sewed a minyan of golem plushes in bright colors and soft fabrics, sending these plushies to trans and nonbinary youth. Emmett spent time researching the history of the golem legend in Jewish texts, and created a midrashic zine to accompany each golem, celebrating this project at their capstone siyyum “Golempalooza” on June 29th, 2025. Their capstone was inspired by Golem projects like Ketzirah haMa’agelet at Devotaj Sacred Arts and TherapyGolems. You can learn more about their project, the folkore of golems & order a Golem for trans and non-binary youth in your life here.

Lisa Heineman
2025

Inspired by Benay Lappe’s Crash Theory, Unbound philosophies for the Jewish future, and her teaching experience as a professor, Lisa Heineman created a daylong retreat for her community members exploring a central question: what happens when old systems crash, when the world as we know it is no longer sustainable? Using Judaism’s history as a framework for crashes and reinventions that draw on ancient tradition and wisdom, Lisa led “Dreaming in Jewish” on February 23rd, 2025 at the Sacred Collective in Iowa City for people who were “Jewish, Jew-ish, Jew-Curious, or Just Plain Human.” She intends to recreate this event in a variety of venues across physical and digital space. You can reach out to Lisa to learn more about bringing “Dreaming in Jewish” to a community near you