The short: Devon Spier is an author and digital design theologian (proemologian), who teaches others to weave their own theology through poems, prose and digital images.

The medium: Currently, Devon is a freelance Jewish ritual guide and artist-in-residence for individuals, families, couples and communities and works as the Chief Curator and Digital Design Theologian of “JEW-ish Designs” online irreverent art depot. She most recently served as a Jewish art and somatics teacher with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and has also served as a Student Rabbi with the City Museum of New York and as a Liturgist-in-Residence for The National Havurah Committee, a nondenominational, multigenerational Jewish learning network in North America and Israel.

The (hey, I’m Jewish) long: An outspoken compassion catalyst, Devon’s contemporary liturgical poetry is celebrated in the global religious and Jewish community, where she has resourced nearly every mainstream movement, network and denomination of Judaism to offer explorations of trauma, belonging, identity and recovery.

Devon’s work has been consulted and published by The London School for Jewish Studies, The Jewish Theological Seminary, The Central Conference of American Rabbis, The Reconstructing Judaism movement, Jewish Women’s Archives, Hevria and Jewcer: The Leading Crowdfunding Platform for Jewish Causes. Her Jewish rituals, poems and artistic programming have also been selected for use by Combined Jewish Philanthropies, The Ruderman Family Foundation, NewCAJE, The Howard Grinspoon Foundation, The Jewish Artists’ Laboratory in Boston, the Orot Centre for New Jewish Learning in Chicago and most recently, the City Museum of New York, BAYIT and Ben Yehuda Press, Repair The World and AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. She is currently the most published author on Ritualwell.org.

In 2018, Devon was selected as the first Canadian rabbinic student to participate in the T’ruah Rabbinic and Cantorial Summer Fellowship in Human Rights. She also served as a Religion and Public Life Rabbinic Fellow with Join for Justice: The Jewish Organizing & Training Network and a Scholar-in-Residence with the Canadian Jewish Political Affairs Committee.

She was blessed to spend summer 2018 as an intern with the Women’s Prison Association, the oldest advocacy association for women in the United States. She was also recognized by the Ontario Government as a recipient of the “Leading Women, Building Communities” award, which recognizes women who break down barriers for other women.

In 2019, Devon was selected as one of 25 global Jewish women to participate in the Wominyan leadership program, which works to leverage the intersections of Jewish women’s identities for the progress of Jewish women everywhere.

From 2020 to the present time, she has worked as a freelance ‘Zoom’ artist providing ritual support, information and spiritual care through video conferencing, including a Reconstructing Judaism movement COVID-19 video series.

In the early months of the pandemic, she released the bestselling Kindle book “Whatever it is, gently: Quiet Meditations for the Noise of the Pandemic” and taught Torah and somatic nervous system practice as a mode of international conflict transformation for J Street: “The Political Home for Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace Americans.” Her poetry was also featured by the Hadar Institute in “ANU KEHALEKHA – COMMUNITY & RELATIONSHIP High Holiday Reader 5783” and opened the pathbreaking book “When Rabbis Abuse:  Power, Gender, and Status in the Dynamics of Sexual Abuse in Jewish Culture.”

Most recently, Devon’s work entitled “Hungry God Touch” was accepted for publication by the Central Conference of American Rabbis as part of “The First Fifty Years: A Jubilee in Prose and Poetry Honouring Women Rabbis.”

A poet-thinker at the centre of the global public health crisis, Devon’s advocacy and voice were pivotal to the passing of “Eating Disorders Awareness Week” and “The HALT Solitary Act,” in the province of Ontario and state of New York, respectively.

In her “spare” time, Devon is a mikveh guide (trained by Immerse NYC) and an emergent Jewish liturgist who is commissioned to create experiential prayers by religious communities throughout North America, Europe and Asia.  In 2023, she was honoured to contribute her ritual work to “The Routledge Handbook of Judaism in the 21st Century.”

“Heart Map and the Song of Our Ancestors” was Devon’s first book and an online poetry bestseller.

Prior to rabbinical school, Devon worked as a songleader, day camp educator and teacher at URJ Kutz Camp, Camp Newman and Hadassah Neurim in Israel. She then attended the University of Waterloo, where she received her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Religious Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies.

A recognized change maker, she has spent over two decades in the non-profit sector, from local neighbourhoods, to JCCs, Jewish day camps to human rights boards, theatres to grassroots women’s groups, to most recently, the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom.

Devon’s work in Canadian civil society has involved re-imagining relationships between Jews and Muslims and has also tied together unlikely partners in the private and public sectors to create community-based solutions to food insecurity and racism.

Among many strides for anti-racism, these campaigns have resulted in the acceptance of the first Muslim cemetery in Montreal, Quebec and the passing of a Day of Action commemorating the Montreal Mosque terrorist attack in the Ontario Legislature.

In the Canadian non-profit sphere, she has worked in cooperation with local neighbourhood and municipal stakeholders to successfully create the first Halal breakfast program in Canada.

She has also collaborated with student entrepreneurs (“Food Not Waste”), municipal leaders, a local farmer’s market and Food Bank to re-purpose food waste and change the approach to food insecurity in a mid-sized Canadian city.

Locating strength in difference, Devon designed and implemented a multi-faith Peace Camp in a Christian-university college. For her vision on courageous encounters that bring together the most unlikely peacemakers, Peace Camp received a prestigious grant from the Lyle S. Hallman Foundation that has grown the camp to provide peace education training for Canadian students each year.

For her community development, Devon has been honoured with peacebuilding awards from the YMCA and Interfaith Grand River as well the Outstanding Achievement Award and Peter C. and Elisabeth Williams Memorial Scholarship from the departments of Religious Studies and Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Waterloo.