Ruach Embodied Jewish Practice

Ruach (רוח) means breath/spirit in Hebrew

Ruach body-based Jewish practice groups offer transformation and healing in an anti-Zionist, anti-racist, and feminist framework.

Ruach's Mission

To increase the power and impact of Jewish anti-Zionist leaders across movements for justice through embodied practice. Ruach promotes healing from trauma and oppression, cultivating resilience, and improving coordinated action for the sake of personal, collective, and systemic transformation.

In this time of increased repression and fascism, when the right is trying to divide our movements, many of us are experiencing hopelessness, despair and burnout that can lead to conflict and breakdowns. Ruach helps us learn the embodied skills we need to navigate conflict, stay connected, and take effective action.

In Ruach groups, we:

Learn body-based practices that increase our sense of agency, belonging, dignity and power.
Build our capacity to hold complexity, set centered boundaries, and cultivate interdependence.
Strengthen our embodied solidarity with Palestine.
Connect with each other, our ancestors, and spirit through our bodies.

History of Ruach

Wes helped found the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace in 2005. As they deepened their organizing work, they searched for a politicized healing methodology to support Jewish folks to heal from intergenerational trauma and strengthen our actions toward a free Palestine and a liberated world to come.

They discovered generative somatics in 2010 and became a practitioner and teacher in this lineage in 2015. In 2021, they started Ruach to provide a culturally-specific healing methodology that integrates Jewish framing and ritual into somatic practices. Dona Hirschfield-White joined the facilitation team in 2023. Hundreds of people have participated in fourteen Ruach cohorts.

our team

Wendy Elisheva Somerson (Wes)

Wes is a queer non-binary, disabled, cat-loving Ashkenazi Jewish somatic healer, writer, activist, and visual artist residing on Duwamish and Coast Salish land also known as Seattle. They are the author of An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Jewish Healing (North Atlantic, 2025).

After escaping academia with a PhD in English, they became one of the founders of the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and have been active in Palestinian solidarity work for more than two decades. They work with social justice groups and individual activists, artists, and culture workers to resource and support transformation through ritual, actions, and healing.

Dona Hirschfield White

Dona is a licensed clinical social worker and Trauma-Recovery coach practicing relational politicized liberation psychotherapy with individuals, relationships and groups. She specializes in somatically resourcing social justice activists, leaders, immigrants, LGBTQI folk, people who have harmed, and other resilient survivors to align their values, longings, and actions.

She is a queer, white-bodied, European immigrant Jewish parent who has been investigating whiteness and embodied supremacy/oppression for the last 20 years. Dona lives and works on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone territory also known as San Francisco, California.

An Anti-Zionist Path to Embodied Healing

Wes’ book describes the theory behind Ruach.

“…an accessible pathway for healing from historical trauma, releasing it from our bodies, and preventing it from being passed on to future generations. This may well be the missing piece for breaking the pattern of violence undergirding Israeli apartheid and occupation.”

— Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World