The Sacred Practice of Being Here

Rabbi Cat Zavis has been senior rabbi of Beyt Tikkun since 2023, guiding the community with prophetic vision and spiritual depth. A feminist, anti-racist scholar and activist, she shapes Jewish rituals and teachings that connect the sacred, the personal, and the political. Under her leadership, Beyt Tikkun has grown in membership, activism, and bold educational initiatives, including embracing Judaism beyond zionism. An accomplished lawyer, social justice activist, and teacher of Prophetic Empathy and Revolutionary Love, Rabbi Cat inspires the community to live justice, love, and spiritual courage every day.

Dr. Ami Goodman, a retired physician in San Francisco, has had a lifelong love of music and the Jewish liturgy. He enjoys giving musical life to the prayers, aiming to enhance their deep meaning and messages via the melody. He has been leading the musical portions of the Beyt Tikkun High Holiday and Shabbat morning services since 2015 and recently stepped down from the role of Music Director at Beyt Tikkun.
He lives with his wife Abby, a poet and physician, in San Francisco, and they have two grown children.

Congresswoman Lateefah Simon proudly represents California’s 12th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. California’s 12th District is home to numerous diverse communities and encompasses parts of Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, Piedmont, and San Leandro.

With over three decades of experience in organizing, advocacy, and philanthropy, Congresswoman Simon has deep roots as a Bay Area leader and activist. Congresswoman Simon started her career at the Young Women's Freedom Center and later partnered with then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris to head the Back on Track program.

In Congress, Congresswoman Simon is focused on addressing the housing affordability crisis, tackling the mental health and homelessness epidemic, lowering everyday costs for working families from groceries to prescription drugs, building climate resilience, protecting women’s rights, standing up for immigrant communities, and more.

Congresswoman Simon serves as a Deputy Whip for Policy, a Vice Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Democratic Women’s Caucus, Congressional Asian American Pacific Caucus, Reproductive Rights Caucus, Labor Caucus, and Equality Caucus.

Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia) is a formerly houseless, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, Po'poet, visionary, teacher and single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled, indigenous mama Dee, and the co–founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork. She is the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America, co-editor of A Decolonizers Guide to A Humble Revolution, Born & Raised in Frisco and - Poverty ScholarShip -Poor People Theory, Arts, words and Tears Across Mama Earth A PeoplesTeXt to name a few. In 2011 she visioned and co-launched The Homefulness Project - a homeless peoples solution to homelessness and the "Liberation easement" in Ohlone/Lisjan/Huchuin aka Oakland, and is currently working on building/mamafesting and unSelling more Homefulness Projects with other houseless leaders In Yelamu, Tovaangar and Huchiun - in 2022 she narrated a short movie based on her childrens book When Mama and Me Lived Outside - one families journey thru homelessness and in 2025 she co-created Crushing Wheelchairs - a movie based on an original play she wrote honoring the survivors and ancestors of the settler violence of sweeping humans like we r trash with an all houseless cast, her tagline- "We Are Not Acting - We Are Living ..."

Jan Padover is a master percussionist well known throughout the Bay Area. He plays primarily Middle Eastern and jazz rhythms, and has performed for Bay Area audiences for many years.