About Ways of Awe

Weaving together interpretative translations, research, interviews, and sounds, Ways of Awe is a queer anti-Zionist audio companion for the Jewish High Holidays. Join talmud scholars, rabbis, and artists as they unearth the meanings, grammar, and ancient gossip inside the holiest prayers of the Jewish year. Created by Maia Brown and Shelby Handler, these audio collages range from meditative to liberatory, grief-stricken to playful, irreverent to awestruck, and from the ancestral to the immediate.

From Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, the Days of Awe, or the Yamim Noraim, are a portal for collective reckoning and return. Each episode of Ways of Awe features a different prayer and could be listened to during the ten days, or in the month of Elul leading up. Whenever and wherever these sounds find you, we hope they deepen your relationship to and reinvention of our annual traditions—in service of diasporic flourishing and decolonial imagining.

Ways of Awe just completed our first season of five episodes—we've almost hit 5k downloads! This is extremely strong for a first podcast season. Our top listening locations were Seattle, Philly, and Brooklyn. We also had listeners in Canada, UK, Australia, Spain, Ireland, South Africa, Germany and more.

Help us make Season Two!

We are so grateful that Ways of Awe got to join so many people in their Days of Awe journeys. We have SO many ideas for future episodes and are eager to make a second season! We need your support to make it a reality. Audio projects, particularly woven & multivocal projects like ours, take hundreds of hours to write, research, plan, record, edit, and master. Our goal is to raise 3,000 to cover some of the project’s costs. We will also be applying for grants and another studio support program.

If you found Ways of Awe to be a meaningful addition to your High Holidays season, will you consider donating at any amount?

We know this is a time where money is needed to fund so many essential efforts. We invite you to match whatever amount you give to Ways of Awe towards the movement for Palestinian liberation. We suggest giving (and listening) to Makdisi Street or Rethinking Palestine podcasts, and/or giving direct aid for Palestinians on the ground in Gaza and Cairo through trusted friends, Donkey Saddle Projects, and/or supporting the organizing work of Palestinian Youth Movement.

Thank you all for listening close to these prayers with us.

In awe & gratitude,

Maia Brown & Shelby Handler

Creators of Ways of Awe

About us:

Maia Brown is a Yiddish musician and dance-leader, writer, translator, visual artist and educator. Brown has a background in oral history and fine art at Oberlin College, including a Watson Fellowship to study storytelling and advocacy in South Africa and the North of Ireland. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College. She is the founder of anti-fascist Yiddish folk-punk duo, Brivele. You can find more of their work at Der Tkhines Proyekt, Open Siddur Project, Town Hall Seattle, Humanities Washington, and e-flux Architecture. Learn more at maia-brown.com

Shelby Handler is a writer and organizer living in Seattle on Dxʷdəwʔabš (Duwamish) land. Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, Redivider, Poetry Northwest, Black Warrior Review Online, The Journal, Southern Indiana Review, among others. Shelby received their MFA in poetry at the University of Washington-Seattle and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Shelby has received support from Seattle Public Library, Tin House, the Richard Hugo House, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Mineral School, the Seventh Wave, Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington, Jack Straw Cultural Center, Gay City Arts, Asylum Arts, and the Yiddish Book Center. Shelby organizes full-time with Jewish Voice for Peace. Follow them @shelbeleh and shelbyhandler.com.

Help us make Ways of Awe Season Two!