On a clear, crisp December morning a month after her 39-year-old husband, Evan, died of cancer, Mikaela Dunitz immersed herself in a Berkeley neighbor’s hot tub as Zoë Francesca Goldblatt recited the Shema, the Shehechiyanu and other prayers with her. Calming music with soulful lyrics played in the background.
Goldblatt, an end-of-life doula who supports individuals and families as death nears, crafted the “shloshim mikvah” for Dunitz to mark the end of the 30-day mourning period in Judaism. Goldblatt had counseled Dunitz and her husband as his illness progressed. When the young widow shared the depth of her pain following his passing, she and Goldblatt turned to ritual as a way to process the grief.
“It felt important and powerful to be held in this way not only by Zoë, but by the ritual itself,” said Dunitz, whose son was just 2½ years old when his father died in 2023. “I really needed to have something to mark the time and to not just let it be another day.”
The “shloshim mikvah” exemplifies the kind of personalized ritual that Goldblatt helps to create through the AriYael Jewish Healing Center, a Bay Area nonprofit that offers spiritual support to those who are navigating illness and grief or are seeking other types of healing.
Goldblatt is co-director of the center alongside her husband, Rabbi Dan Goldblatt, who is one of AriYael’s three co-founders and rabbi emeritus of Danville’s Congregation Beth Chaim after serving there for three decades.
The center arose, in large part, from the rabbi’s personal experience with grief following the loss of his first wife, Yael, a therapist who died of a rare form of cancer in 2016. The name “AriYael” honors her memory and that of Ari Mazer, a young engineer who grew up at Beth Chaim and died the same year. His parents, Marc Mazer and Susan Talon-Mazer, a hospice and palliative care nurse, are the nonprofit’s other co-founders.
AriYael offers healing circles for those seeking comfort through meditation and prayer, as well as support groups tailored to specific losses — of a partner, parent or child. There are groups for caregivers and a monthly online “Shalom Death Cafe,” modeled after the death cafe movement of groups where people share their thoughts and feelings about death and dying.
The focus on healing extends beyond end-of-life experiences. The Goldblatts run retreats for couples, and they shepherd clients through transitions from the joyous to the jarring: baby namings, b’nai mitzvah, weddings, conversions and divorces.
The end of a marriage “can be very traumatizing, and that’s not what anybody wants or needs,” the rabbi said. “We’re renewing the divorce process so it’s gentle and loving and compassionate and healing. We’re always looking at the healing edge of every ritual and every ceremony that we do.”
AriYael launched in 2018 and has been largely funded by donations from family and friends. But it has ramped up its work and its fundraising over the past nine months.
To be sure, it isn’t a reboot of the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center, which closed in 2022 after 31 years due to funding challenges. But AriYael could help fill some of the void left since its closing.
“We have a very different model than the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center had, but we honor the work they did over 30 years,” Dan Goldblatt said.
AriYael does plan to revive at least one pillar of the original center’s work, though. It is collaborating with Camp Newman, Sinai Memorial Chapel, Jewish LearningWorks and A Healing Legacy to remake the BAJHC’s signature Grief and Growing healing retreats. (Dan and Zoë Goldblatt in fact met at one such weekend.) AriYael anticipates the return of the retreats by next year. “We don’t have the exact date yet because we’re waiting on some funding,” Zoë Goldblatt said.
The word “healing” is front and center in AriYael’s name, but the organization also describes itself as a “spiritual laboratory” where people like Dunitz can co-create impactful rituals within a Jewish framework. In the 12 months after her husband died, Dunitz continued a monthly mikvah practice inspired by the shloshim ritual.
“That was really an important part of my grieving process for that first year, a kind of anchoring,” she said.
Bringing meaning to others’ life transitions also brings meaning to Zoë Goldblatt, who trained as a doula through the International End of Life Doula Association. She has a master’s degree in creative writing from Oakland’s Mills College and has co-written several books on symbols and lifecycles.
“I love helping people craft their own final Viddui, or prayer of gratitude and forgiveness,” she said. “I love helping people find innovative ways to mark important anniversaries.”
When eight women from Beth Chaim prepared to celebrate their b’not mitzvah together in December 2023, for example, she designed and led a group mikvah. The women sang, chanted, set intentions and entered a warm swimming pool surrounded by lit candles.
“It was so emotional and so moving, and I had never experienced anything like that before,” said Susan Volsky, who was 73 at the time and reeling from the aftermath of a difficult divorce. “I just felt different afterward. I felt freer. I was able to release some of the baggage I’d been carrying around and feeling guilty about.”
The tailor-made mikvah reflects a driving principle of AriYael: to make the old new, and the new sacred.
“The reason Judaism remained a vibrant spiritual force throughout time is because of our ability to adapt and change and respond to the challenges of the contemporary moment,” said Dan Goldblatt, who received his rabbinical training and ordination through the Jewish Renewal movement. “That’s our approach to every lifecycle transition and all the programs that we do: How can we make this spiritually alive for the people who are wanting this at this moment?”
The rabbi had an early vision for AriYael after his first wife died. Attending a meditation retreat a month later, he shared the idea with the Mazers, who were also navigating grief after losing their 26-year-old son to cancer.
“They were grieving and I was grieving, so we knew we weren’t going to do anything right away,” the rabbi said. “It unfolded over a period of a number of years.”
The center doesn’t have its own space yet, though its co-founders hope to change that — especially as Jewish spiritual needs have become more pronounced since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel.
“The amount of PTSD that’s been stirred is so significant that healing in all its modalities is more important than it has ever been for us,” Dan Goldblatt said. “Jews of all ages are looking for a more authentic connection to Judaism, and there are a lot of ways that people are seeking to find it.”