Empowering Jewish women to illuminate their souls

Elissa grew up in London England. In 1985 she married her American husband, and they started their married life in Washington, DC. After the death of her first child, Elissa started to explore Judaism in much greater depth. In her quest to understand the loss of her baby she explored Jewish sources in general and more specifically regarding death and the afterlife.

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In response to understanding more about the traditional Jewish way of caring for the dead, she became involved in that work herself and has been very active on her local Chevra Kadisha (Burial Society). She speaks widely on the topic of grief and loss and is committed to spreading greater awareness of the holy and loving Jewish customs surrounding death and burial.

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Elissa is the Coordinator for Core’s Communities of Practice (www.CoreTorah.org). She helps each of these many international communities grow and thrive.

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Core is an international organization that aims to create warm and inspiring Jewish communities by nourishing and networking frum women. Core offers training, resources and support for women who want to strengthen their communities on an intentional and ongoing basis. It supports gatherings that help build individuals, families, communities and the Jewish people.

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Elissa started and actively manages Core’s community of practice for women engaged with traditional Chevra Kadisha. It is an international community of hundreds of women from all over the US and Canada, the UK, France, Sweden, Holland, France, Italy, Israel, Chile, Panama, Mexico, South Africa and even Australia. The mission of the community is to share experiences, learn together, give encouragement to each other, network with others and help to develop and support each other. 

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Elissa is responsible for providing on-going professional development for the community. The knowledge she has acquired motivated her to write a book which is a personal memoir of loss and grief with the Jewish teachings about life, death and the afterlife woven into the story. The book, “From One Life to the Next Life; The Sacred Passage After Death,” has just been published by Mosaica Press.

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In addition, Elissa is the Founding Director of Core Connects RI, (www.CoreconnectsRI.com) a non-profit organization that aims to deepen women’s connections to one another, to Jewish wisdom and Jewish values, to empower each other to find greater meaning, purpose and possibility in life and to cultivate unity without uniformity. As director she is passionate about providing others with opportunities to grow and become. She runs programming both online and in person.

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