Practice You with Elena Brower
May 23, 2026 · 41 min · 11 segments
On the nuances of grief and loss, personal rituals, and our willingness to be transformed. 0:00 — Introduction and Guest Introduction 3:04 — Marissa's Personal Story and Grief Journey 7:38…
Her name is Rabbi Marissa Nathan Gerson, and she is the author of a book called "Forget Prayers, Bring Cake!" It is such a wonderful book.
The subtitle is "A Single Woman's Guide to Grieving." Her writing is exceptional.
It appears in Modern Love for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Playboy, Tablet, CNN.com, and more.
She's also trained not just as a rabbi, but in the Shambhala Shamatha meditation tradition.
She's a certified Sivananda yoga teacher, and she holds a Master's of Arts in Jewish Studies with a focus on inherited trauma, as well as sex and gender from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
She was the inherited trauma consultant to Amazon's "Transparent." You remember that show? And is the daughter and granddaughter of war refugees, and she's currently in training to be a rabbi.
We had such a good time at Summit together, and every time I saw you, we just basically started smiling and then giggling and then full on laughing.
This is a book about grief and loss and mourning, and I want to offer to our listener a little, not necessarily a caveat, but I think this is an enthusiastic recommendation, that if you have anything happening in your life that might be causing grief, even grief that you haven't yet named, this book is a really good read, "Forget Prayers-"Bring Cake.
It's actually been out for a couple of years from, uh, Mandala Press for Simon & Schuster.
I have a bunch of questions, and hopefully we can keep this to a reasonable amount of time.
Marissa, you wrote this after the death of your dad, and you start with life before death, and it's such a beautiful honoring of him.
Her name is Rabbi Marissa Nathan Gerson, and she is the author of a book called "Forget Prayers, Bring Cake!" It is such a wonderful book.
The subtitle is "A Single Woman's Guide to Grieving." Her writing is exceptional.
It appears in Modern Love for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Playboy, Tablet, CNN.com, and more.
She's also trained not just as a rabbi, but in the Shambhala Shamatha meditation tradition.
She's a certified Sivananda yoga teacher, and she holds a Master's of Arts in Jewish Studies with a focus on inherited trauma, as well as sex and gender from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.
She was the inherited trauma consultant to Amazon's "Transparent." You remember that show? And is the daughter and granddaughter of war refugees, and she's currently in training to be a rabbi.
We had such a good time at Summit together, and every time I saw you, we just basically started smiling and then giggling and then full on laughing.
This is a book about grief and loss and mourning, and I want to offer to our listener a little, not necessarily a caveat, but I think this is an enthusiastic recommendation, that if you have anything happening in your life that might be causing grief, even grief that you haven't yet named, this book is a really good read, "Forget Prayers-"Bring Cake.
It's actually been out for a couple of years from, uh, Mandala Press for Simon & Schuster.
I have a bunch of questions, and hopefully we can keep this to a reasonable amount of time.
Marissa, you wrote this after the death of your dad, and you start with life before death, and it's such a beautiful honoring of him.
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