Our Team

Rachel Binstock (she/her)

Co-Organizer & Co-Founder

Drawing on a decade of experience running earth-connected Jewish programs at Eden Village, Urban Adamah, Wilderness Torah, and Dayenu, Rachel co-founded Melacha U'Vracha to grow earth-connected Jewish praxis in the Northeast.

An MBA from Johns Hopkins and an MA in Human-Centered Design from MICA brought her to Vermont where she works as Chief of Staff at a circular sanitation startup, turning human waste into fertilizer and re-embedding industry in ecological systems.

Rachel comes to life while processing the natural world around her into ritual items to tend the holy. You might find her making pie, at the local song circle, or dreaming about shmita.

Jessa Wais (they/them)

Co-Organizer, Communications & Registration

Jessa is passionate about increasing access to tools and skills. They bring 6 years of experience serving as a Co-Director at one of the largest tool libraries in the world, right in their hometown of Baltimore, MD on Piscataway and Susquehannock land.

Jessa received their BA in Public Health Studies from Johns Hopkins University. They went on to join Baltimore Corps, a racial equity fellowship where they taught high schoolers woodworking and design thinking.

In their free time, Jessa loves learning how to make new tools. Currently, they are building up their knife-making practice!

Arielle Bareket (she/her)

Co-Organizer, Programming & Intructor Coordination

The great love of Arielle’s life is the natural world. She is a community and clinical herbalist, Registered Nurse (RN) with 11 years of experience in Critical Care, Emergency Medicine, and Post-Op care. She is currently pursuing her Master's degree in Nursing to become a Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner (PMHNP), expanding her capacity to support whole-person healing.

Her devotion to the natural world started at a very young age, but deepened at 19, when she fell in love with hide tanning. During her undergraduate studies at Warren Wilson College, she focused on herbalism and biology. She went on to graduate from the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine in 2014, the Vermont Center for Integrative Herbalism in 2020, and has spent much time learning at The Roots School in Vermont.

Arielle prefers to be outside, riding her bike on gravel roads, creating with her hands, wandering through the woods following animal trails, singing around the Shabbat table with friends, or finding HaShem among the tadpoles growing legs in the pond. She is particularly passionate about weaving together scientific, traditional, and ecological understandings, empowering people to have agency in their experiences of health, and tending to the genuine joy of connecting more intimately with plants, place, and ancestral practices.

Kelsey Leahy (she/they)

Site Coordinator

Kelsey’s mission in this life is to be able to support herself and better their communities as an exceedingly useful vagabond oboist while minimizing their environmental impact. She is a big fan of accountability and transparency, living life openly as a bard and performer, sharing faeral folk songs and stories along the way.

Kelsey is a lifelong learner, holding a bachelor’s degree in both music and sociology. She began her work trade journey at the beginning of 2021 with three months on an off-grid organic farm in the Caribbean. Later that fall they began work trading at the southeast regional earthskills gatherings. Four years and twenty gatherings later, Kelsey stepped into the site coordinator role for the Florida gathering and materials manager for Firefly.

More context can be found at oboerockstar.com

This project is made possible by many more hands <3

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