LF Staff
Margot Seigle
co-director & co-founder
2016 - 2022
Margot, they/them, is a community builder, cultural organizer and music maker who believes our vibrant queer Jewish diasporist future is both here and on its way. During Margot’s 7 years with LF, they tended chickens in all weather, brought visionary spirit, ran the books, and poured their heart into creative programming. Margot is also a co-founder of Let My People Sing! who loves Shabbos, direct communication and slow cooking meat. They come from a lineage of Eastern European Jews who assimilated into whiteness in the Chicago suburbs. At the time of LF closing Margot had just left Millerton, where they had made home for the past decade. Be in touch: margot.fligl@gmail.com.
Chana Rusanov
co-director
2018 - 2022
Chana spent 5 years with Linke Fligl, raising chickens and growing veggies while dreaming of de-assimilating diasporist futures, following two seasons as a farm apprentice at ADAMAH. Post LF, they’re deep in the complexity of integrating their post-Soviet roots and their frum (orthodox) upbringing into their current life and work. They care deeply about being in vulnerable relationship with Torah, and aim to bring others into their explorations of ancient text, queerness and liberatory Jewish practice. Slow, cozy time with friends brings them deep joy, especially if danishes, strong black tea and poetry are at hand. To chat, collab or dream together, reach out to them at cerherbert@gmail.com.
Sol Yael Weiss
graphic designer
2017 - 2022
co-director
2017 - 2021
Sol is a visual artist and organizational development nerd raised on Lisjan Ohlone lands in the Bay Area, California. Sol uses creative strategy, art, song and experiential education for cultural change, exploring what ecology, community and tradition can teach us about overcoming oppressive systems, healing and building new worlds. Sol serves their communities and movements as an illustrator, printmaker and graphic designer, representing musicians, organizers and community builders. Some of their joys include cooking elaborate feasts, leather bookbinding and being outside. Be in touch at solyaelweiss@gmail.com.
Ollie Schwartz
co-director
2021 - 2022
fundraising & program coordinator
2019 - 2021
Ollie, no pronouns, lives with the quiet and the queers in the rural hilltowns of Western Massachusetts on unceded Nipmuc and Pocumtuck lands. At Linke Fligl, Ollie spun a web of access and care around our retreats, built out the redistribution-focused grant operations and major donor campaigns, and brought expertise to LF’s popular education programming. Check out their latest adventure, Pushcart Judaica, inspired by their Lower East Side roots, offering accessible diasporic Jewish ritual objects and education that reflect liberatory values, handcrafted beauty, and queer brilliance. You can find Ollie learning to identify bird calls, dipping candles, avidly reading, and trying to move more slowly through our ever-accelerating world. Be in touch at schwartz.ollie@gmail.com!
Lila Rimalovski
garden & chickens steward
2021
Lila Rimalovski facilitates connection between the more-than-human (ecologies, landscapes, spirit) and the human (body, mind, heart) through sacred place-making. Farmer and herbalist by training, organizer by day, and ritualist by new moon, Lila’s work attempts to stitch the body back to the land to affirm a sense of wonder, belonging, and deservedness of existence in this complicated place and time. Born on the west coast and raised by Northeastern maples, Lila currently makes home in queer Jewish community on Ohlone land in Oakland, CA.
ADIN ZUCKERMAN
co-founder and chicken & land steward
2016 - 2018
Adin, our resident garden magician & chicken whisperer, was instrumental in setting up farm systems and getting the project off the ground. After 2.5 years of pouring themselves into LF, Adin flew the coop to study the intersections of mental health and nutrition. They now spend their days in the Pacific Northwest hiking with their sweet pup Peabody, sewing custom fit t-shirts, and supporting children in befriending their nervous systems.
Cultural Organizing Team
The Cultural Organizing Team (COT) was a 2 year-long cohort of emerging leaders in our community who partnered with us to develop our theory of Jewish relationship to land and liberation. Through the COT, these LF community leaders participated in program planning, organizational strategy, theory development and event leadership.
Megan Pamela Ruth Madison
Megan, she/her, is an early childhood educator and doctoral candidate at Brandeis University studying social policy. When she's not working on finishing up her dissertation, she works part-time facilitating workshops on racism, gender, patriarchy, sexuality, and antisemitism for teachers and other changemakers. She grew up on Lake Michigan and now calls Harlem home. She serves on the board of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and JOIN for Justice.
Rena Branson
Rena Branson, they/them, is a Jewish artist, writer, and Reiki practitioner who uplifts personal and collective healing through song. In large part inspired by their time at Linke Fligl, Rena founded A Queer Nigun Project (aqueernigunproject.org), which organizes singing circles for queer and trans folks and offers musical-spiritual support to people in the Jewish community who are incarcerated. Rena writes original music and also teaches traditional Hasidic melodies, expanding access to their power for all seekers. Learn more at renabranson.com!
Zebulon Hurst
i am an artist, seminarian, and poet who was raised between a college town in Iowa and the south side of Chicago. my favorite thing to do is call my aunties while in the kitchen, getting razzed about all manner of things. my most recent publication is this piece on the Feminist Studies of Religion blog, entitled: Theoëroticism: If This Body Wasn’t Alone.
Alli Warshaw
Alli Warshaw is a Jewish cultural/spiritual worker who helped start a liberation oriented anti-zionist Jewish Havurah in New Haven CT called Mending Minyan. She is an Ashkenazi trans woman psychiatric nurse practitioner at a community health center where she brings a racial, economic, and disability justice politic into community psychiatric health care. Alli is a homebody that loves learning about herbal medicine, somatic therapies, martial arts, and neuroscience.
Batya Levine
Batya Levine, they/them, uses song as a tool for cultivating healing and resilience in their work as a communal song leader, musician, shaliach tzibur (Jewish prayer leader) and cultural organizer. They believe in the liberatory power of song to untie what is bound within us, and sustain us as we build a more just and beautiful world. Batya is a co-founder and Director of Programs at Let My People Sing! and served on the Cultural Organizing Team at Linke Fligl. They offer song, ritual, and workshops in a variety of communities, and compose original music made of Ashkenazi yearning, queer heart-medicine, and emunah (faith/trust). Batya is also a lover of the ocean, queer dance parties, and puns. www.batyalevine.com
IDA ASSEFA
Ida Assefa is an organizer and community health care worker living in on Massachusetts land in Boston, MA. Ida is a founding member of the Jews of Color, Indingenous, Sephardi, and Mizrahi caucus of Kavod, a multiethnic and multiracial community led by young Jews in Greater Boston, a member of the Let My People Sing! Advisory team, and an organizer with Muslim Justice League and the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network. She provides care and support for youth living with HIV through her work at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Advisory Council
Our advisory council met with us quarterly and offered guidance on LF’s budget and financial planning, cultural programing and organizational goals and direction. The council was comprised of folks who brought unique and relevant skills, experience and insight. Originally a one year commitment, all four members were with us for three years!
rosza daniel lang/levitsky / ראָזעלע זושוק האַלעװי
Rosza, they or she, is a cultural worker and organizer based at Brooklyn's Glitter House. Never learned how to make art for art's sake; rarely likes working alone. Just another red-diaper diasporist gendertreyf mischling who identifies with, not as.
Some projects: koytfilth.band; survivedandpunishedny.org; spectaclecommittee.org; criticalreperformance.org;
Tagan Engel
Tagan Engel, she/her, is the founder of The Table Underground radio show, podcast and website where she records stories of food, community, anti-racism and creative social justice work. She has over 25 years experience in food systems change work including as a professional chef, entrepreneur, grassroots organizer, policy maker, and sustainable food business consultant. Tagan is the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors of the revolt at the Sobibor death camp, and she carries the legacy of their liberation throughout her work. Tagan has lived and worked in New York City, Boston, and is currently based in her hometown of New Haven, CT with her family. For more info: www.thetableunderground.com
Karen Zelermeyer
Karen, she/her, is a quilter, metal worker, writer and activist based in NY. She spent way too many decades working in the non-profit industry focused on queer and women’s philanthropy. Before that she was a back to the land hippie homesteader in WV growing veggies and weed, raising goats, midwifing babies and organizing food coops. Check out her true crime podcast, co-hosted with her daughter.
