Author Meet and Greet with Haviva Ner-David!

  Join us on August 25th from 12:00pm - 2:00pm for a meet and greet with "To Die In Secret" author Haviva Ner-David!

Haviva Ner-David is a writer and rabbi. In 2006 she became the first woman to publicly receive Orthodox rabbinic ordination, only to leave Orthodoxy and call herself a post-denominational rabbi. Ten years later, she received interfaith ordination from the One Spirit Interfaith-Interspiritual Seminary and now goes by post-denominational inter-spiritual rabbi. She writes both fiction and non-fiction and is the author of three spiritual journey memoirs, two novels, a children’s book, short stories, essays, a blog on Times of Israel, scholarly articles and a guidebook for engaged couples due out in 2024. Her short story, “Blame,” won the 2016 Lilith Magazine short fiction contest.
Link to short story. Her rabbinic specialties are spiritual companionship, water immersion rituals, wedding and marriage preparation, coming of age ceremonies and other ritual and ceremony creation and innovation. Founding rabbi of Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body and Soul on Kibbutz Hannaton in the Lower Galilee, she officiates and helps create on-site personalized immersion ritual ceremonies and facilitates group mikveh workshops. As a spiritual companion, she works with individuals and couples and specializes in *dreamwork, inner child work and nature soul work, as well as general sacred listening.

 To Die In Secret: Recently widowed herself, and childless, Nomi, at sixty, still grapples with the consequences of the event that sent her into exile as a teenager. She hasn’t seen her mother in forty years and fears it’s too late to heal wounds that have festered far too long. She simply wants to settle her sister’s estate, make sure her mother’s safe, and return to her safe kibbutz life. What seems like a straightforward mission is complicated by the mystery of her sister’s death, the plight of a pregnant teenager rejected by her Orthodox Jewish parents, and John, the sympathetic police officer who befriends her. The old farmhouse Nomi inherits from her sister also holds mysteries, and maybe a ghost, of its own.

To Die in Secret weaves interlocking threads of a richly complex tale of trauma, parenting, and forgiveness, as succeeding generations face horrific situations and unimaginable choices and struggle to find the hope and faith to carry on.