The Hebrew Calendar As An Accessible Tool For Jewish Mysticism: Interview with Nomy Lamm
Nomy Lamm is a musician, illustrator, voice teacher, creative coach, and Kohenet/Hebrew Priestess. Nomy is the Creative Director of Sins Invalid, a disability justice-based performance project, and sings cosmic power ballads for the rise of the matriarchy in a band called The Beauty. Their most recent project is a choir called Sacred Fragments Ecstatic Choir, an experiment in group ecstatic singing practices. Nomy lives in Olympia, WA on occupied Squaxin/Nisqually/Chehalis land with their partner Lisa and their animal companions Dandelion, Momma, Calendula and Chanukah.
Nomy is always on the lookout for calendars that help integrate the Hebrew/moon calendar with the Gregorian calendar, that support them living in both worlds. “You can see in the background in some of my photos of the Jewish Planner, on the wall is Rebekah Erev’s Moons Calendar for 5780”, Nomy told me. They also use the Radical Jewish Calendar.
Amanda and I have been aware of some of the other options for integrating the Hebrew and Gregorian dates, and it was great to get Nomy’s take on it. We were actually featured, along with the Radical Jewish Calendar on Lilith Magazine’s blog a few months back, if you want to check it out.
Nomy really pin-pointed one of our goals for The Jewish PlannerThe Jewish Planner 5781 when they said, “I appreciate both of those for what they offer, but/and I was excited to find a planner that is more oriented toward daily use and planning for the year.”
Nomy found a cool way to use the weekly wheel, which we are excited to share with you.
“I keep my planner next to my bed and in the morning, after saying the Modah Ani and before the Birkhot HaShachar, I take a moment to write down whatever dream fragments I can remember in the little slice of pie available for the day. So I don’t really use it as an appointment calendar, but I do enter major things happening throughout the month at the beginning of the month, and I write about the themes that you’ve outlined. And then I just use it to record my dreams. It’s a limited space so I have to be concise, but there is something interesting about keeping it short, and being able to see a map of how many days per week I remembered and recorded my dreams.”
We’ve gotten the feedback from many users that it would be nice to have more space on the weekly pages. For this year, we are keeping it the same, but we are considering changes for 5782. In the meantime, it is really cool to hear from Nomy (and many other folks) that the small space can serve as a generative creative constraint and that the weekly wheel has multiple possible uses.
Nomy is working on their own amazing Jewish products that you can check out. There’s a Counting the Omer divination deck they’re working on as a collaboration with their teacher Taya Shere. Last year Nomy did a drawing every night during the 49-day stretch between Pesach and Shavuot known as Counting the Omer. Each drawing related to the specific combinations of sephirot for that day and the associations that Taya mapped out. Nomy is also working on a color-coded deck with the drawings that can be used during that span of time to track each day and the combinations of energies, and then it can be used at other times as a divination deck or study guide. “I was hoping it would be finished and available for people to use this year, but I think it may take another year before it’s ready to offer to the world. I am excited for there to be more accessible tools for current generations of Jewish mystics to utilize to help understand and integrate these ancient gifts of our lineages.”
We are excited Nomy is using The Jewish planner and look forward to seeing all the amazing new offerings they bring to the Jewish community.