Dr. Rabbi Haviva Ner-David is a rabbi and writer. She is the founder of Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body and Soul, where she officiates and creates immersion ceremonies, both traditional and innovative, and runs mikveh workshops for people of all ages and faiths. Haviva was the first woman to publicly receive Orthodox rabbinic ordination in 2006, but she left Orthodoxy, was ordained as an interfaith minister at the One Spirit Interfaith-Interspiritual Seminary, and is a certified spiritual companion and dreamworker. She holds a Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Maryland. Haviva is the author of three spiritual journey memoirs: Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Towards Traditional Rabbinic Ordination (2000); Chanah's Voice: A Rabbi Struggles with Gender, Commandment and the Women's Rituals of Baking, Bathing and Brightening (2014), and Dreaming Against the Current: A Rabbi's Soul Journey (2021). Haviva's debut novel, Hope Valley (2021), is about the friendship between a Palestinian-Israeli and a Jewish-Israeli woman in Galilee during the leadup to the Second Intifada. She lives on Kibbutz Hannaton in northern Israel with Jacob, her life partner of the past 32 years, is the mother of seven, and lives with FSHD, a genetic degenerative muscular disorder that has been one of her greatest teachers.