About Me
Elana June Margolis (she/her) is a Queer anti-Zionist Jewish teacher, artist and ordained Kohenet (Priestess). Her work is dedicated to realigning texts and ritual/ pedagogical technologies in service of personal healing towards collective liberation.
Elana June is committed to creating containers for Jewish people to experience and embody a Judaism beyond Zionism. Her teaching and ritual leadership is rooted in Jewish mysticism, earth-based practice, abolitionism, feminism, anti-racism, disability justice, queer theory and TRANScendence. She is particularly passionate about working with Jewish Time as a form of diasporic architecture - allowing Jews to locate their Jewishness within the wheel of the year and through life-cycle ritual.
Elana June has worked in the Waldorf World for over a decade, serving as a class teacher at the East Bay Waldorf School and Brooklyn Waldorf School. In 2022, she co-founded and led a teacher training initiative for emerging Brooklyn Waldorf teachers in partnership with the Sunbridge Waldorf Teacher Training Institute. She has served as a mentor for teachers seeking to gain their footing in the Waldorf world while decolonizing the pedagogy and practice. Elana June is currently taking a sabbatical from full-time classroom teaching.
Elana June's commitment to creative, embodied education and ritual as a tool for aligning culture towards collective liberation is consistent in her work with children and adults.
"Elana’s commitment and devotion to doing everything she can to contribute to the birth of a radically re-imagined world, born on a foundation of liberation, justice, and absolute love for that which is Holy, is undeniable and unmistakable. I find her to be reliable throughout a vast expanse of diverse experience, which is to say that she is always right there, holding it all. She is a bridge-er of worlds, coaxing limiting perceptions out of their boxes and corners, and onto dance floors that buzz and boom with extravagant queerness, and make space for deep grief, joy, struggle, awe, broken-heartedness, questions, and pleasure, all to spin in a gorgeously untamed hora. Encountering Elana June’s way of being reminds me by glowing example how to take teeny step by teeny step towards the doorways of my own unabashed love of G-d, and powerful longing towards beautiful and deep liberation."
-Molly Rosen
"Elana June is a truly magical human being and a gift to our people. They know how to take the core meaning of something, find its gayest and most radical facet, and amplify it/bedazzle it/serve it up on a silver platter and make it irresistible to taste. They have a clear channel and line of insight into the holiness around all of us, and are simply an ecstatic joy to learn & collaborate with."
- Binya Kóatz
"To be guided in Jewish space by Elana June is a gift. She holds us softly and safely, weaving together magic and mysticism. Her offerings are some of the spaces where I have felt most connected to my Judaism. She invites me to enter with every part of my being, the queer, anti-zionist, the skeptic, the newbie. I have deeply appreciated her and her contribution to the Jewish landscape."
-Anonymous
"Elana June's inclusive and radical approach to connecting with spirit allowed me to reconnect with foundational elements of myself and develop new ways to consider bringing new practices into my daily routine."
-Faythe Levine (she/h
