Welcome to Itzik’s Well and irwinkeller.com.

I am a rabbi, teacher, writer, music-maker and performer. I have served as spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Shalom in Sonoma County, California since 2008, and received my rabbinic ordination through the ALEPH ordination program in 2021. I am a co-founder and steward of the Taproot Gathering – a deep dive into mystical learning and spiritual practice for activists, artists and community ritualists.

If you check out my blog, Itzik's Well, or read my book, Shechinah at the Art Institute, you'll see what I am driven to think and write about: life, loss, family, hope, change, Torah, queerness, and the pervasive press of the unseen.

What else? I have a past. I was once a lawyer and advocate (including being the primary author of Chicago's first gay rights law). I had the distinct honor to turn my activism into song and play through being a marginally famous singing drag queen for 21 years with America's Favorite Dragapella Beautyshop Quartet, the Kinsey Sicks, dubbed by NPR "the Royal Shakespeare Company of drag performance."

Below are a few offerings for your enjoyment.

If you want to know more about my life and wild mix of careers, you could check out one of these: 

The Sacred and the Profane (Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

Kinsey Sicks' Drag Queen Turned Rabbi Passes On the Crown (San Francisco Chronicle)

Oath of Disloyalty (a poem-manifesto sung in haftarah trope)

Thanks for visiting the site. Wander around. I look forward to being in touch.