Tikkun olam starts at home.
The future is relational.
Jewish wisdom translated into practical relational skills.
Everything is experiential.
Everything can be used that same week, at home and in the community.
Relationships are the one thing that cannot be automated, outsourced or replaced.
The quality of our lives depends on the quality of our relationships.
At home, in shul, and as a people.
It is time to come back home.
Judaism has always been relational.
Relevance is relational.
Ron Wolfson made the call over a decade ago. Relational Judaism. Programs do not build community, relationships do. The Jewish world heard it and much of it agreed.
Now is the time for the next step. Applied relational Judaism. Not a concept, not greeters at the door, but detailed relational skills drawn from our own tradition and practised in the room. That is what we do.
“Assael and Galit are 100% correct. Creating an applied relational Judaism playground is far more than name tags and even small groups.”
Where we work
Three areas, one method. Open any area below to see the sessions inside it.
This is already happening.
We are in these rooms now. Day schools, universities, Jewish Family Services, federations, synagogues and camps.
Four practices run through everything we teach.
Reignite curiosity, humor and connection.
Receive your partner without defending.
Speak honestly, with courage and care.
Own your part in the pattern.
What happens in the room is the curriculum.
Relational workshops for Jewish communities.
Couples, men, women, parents, families and camps. Heart-centered, practical tools. Live demonstrations, reflective exercises, private partner or group work.
The Relational Roadmap
Our signature sessionSame partner. New marriage. Same community. New relationships.
Built on our Remarriage Roadmap model. Not only for couples. For any two people who want a relationship at eye level. Through live demos and paired exercises, participants practice the four skills that make a relationship honest and alive.
Ezer K’negdo
עזר כנגדוThe art of being a supportive partner
Everyone quotes the verse under the chuppah. Almost nobody has the practice. Ezer means support, kenegdo means opposite, and a marriage lives in both at once. Participants leave with six skills for supporting and challenging the person they love, every day.
The Art of Relational Conflict
אומנות המחלוקתHolding tension together
Machloket l’shem shamayim is an ideal, and a skill nobody was taught. Participants learn the art of the generative fight, the one that ends closer than it started. The result is a two-narrative relationship with room for both people, so elu ve’elu becomes a practice instead of a phrase.
The Circle of Differentiation
מעגל המובחנותRelating out of hope, not fear
Fear makes relationships binary. Antisemitism, war and threat push a person, a family and a whole community into the victim triangle, shifting between victim, persecutor and savior. This session teaches the differentiated alternative, built on three roles, receive, support and protect.
Relational trainings for teams and leaders.
Tasks get automated. Relationships do not. A Jewish professional’s real technology is the relationships they create, and almost nobody was trained in it. Fourteen workshops, one method. Take the ones your team actually needs.
Read: Synagogues as relational playgrounds, eJewishPhilanthropy →
The Relational Roadmap
A model for mature, playful relationships
Live demonstration, relational drills and guided reflection move a group from defensiveness toward curiosity and accountability.
Syntax: “Yes, and.” “Tell me more.” “The truth is…”
The Art of Relational Conflict
Conflict as an engine, not an emergency
Through live enactments and relational mapping, participants regulate reactivity and turn friction into trust.
Best for groups that avoid conflict, or keep having the same one.
Into Me See
From self presentation to real connection
People learn to present competence while hiding their actual experience. Through storytelling and improvisation, participants practice being honest with the people they work beside daily.
Best for leadership cohorts. New teams. Long teams that went quiet.
Work And/Or Life. The Three Turntables.
There is no balance. There is balancing. An evening for Jewish professional networks, built on the Yachasim Continuum. Efficiency and presence ✱ Game and play ✱ Giving and receiving.
Ten more sessions, same methodStages of Groups ✱ Roles in Groups ✱ Under the Surface ✱ Team Ninja ✱ Good Goodbyes ✱ Relational Mastery ✱ Presence and Authority ✱ Failing Forward ✱ Intuitive Thinking ✱ Playback Theatre and Storytelling
Relational Repair with Israel.
Staying in relationship around the hardest conversation in Jewish life.
The issue is not disagreement. It is our diminishing capacity to stay in relationship around Israel. We do not try to solve the geopolitical conflict. We work the relational moment.
Our tradition teaches elu v’elu. Differentiation, the capacity to hold conviction and connection at the same time, is not only a psychological skill. It is a spiritual discipline. It's time for a different experience with Israel.
Name the moment
Through sociometry, participants see where they actually stand. Nobody argues yet, and the fear of being the only one in the room drops away.
Regulate the intensity
Reactivity is information, not an emergency. Staying in the room when your body says leave.
Differentiate in real time
In pairs, people say the thing they actually believe, and let the other person land it without defending.
Hold multiplicity
Two narratives live in one room and neither has to win. A two narrative community, with room for both.
The goal is not agreement.
The goal is the capacity to stay close.
Congregants, clergy and educators, boards and lay leadership, teens, parents and families, federation, JCC, camp and campus teams. 45 minutes to a multi session series.
In person or online. English or Hebrew.
Every session is built for the room it is walking into.
We are relationship researchers and Jewish relational educators. We teach our own original relational models, practiced with thousands of couples, families and organizations.
Dr. Assael Romanelli, PhD, LCSW
Couples and family therapist, Jewish relational educator, former JAFI shaliach, author of Feel Free Together: How to Remarry Your Partner. Twenty years of clinical practice and twenty of improvisation, in one room.
Galit Romanelli, MA, PhD candidate
Relationship coach, social entrepreneur, facilitator of change, and doctoral researcher in gender studies. Her work sits where women, power and partnership meet. She brings the embodied half of every session.
Sixteen years married and on their sixth marriage to each other, Assael and Galit teach from inside their own marriage.
Panim el panim.
Face to face.
“Everything worth knowing cannot be taught. It must be experienced.”
Carl WhitakerThat is why relational skills have to be practiced inside a relationship.
Built in a room, between people, in real time.
I-thou.
Every session we run is experiential.
Tell us what your community needs.
Contact us to design a talk, a workshop or a full series, in person or online.
Looking for support for your own relationship?
We also offer coaching, individual, couples and family therapy through The Potential State.