SIVAN SPECTOR
Admin and Programming Director

Sivan Spector (she/her) is an educator, director, and puppet maker based in Chicago. She has worked in theatres all over the city as an artist and educator, including Firehouse Arts Studio, The Raven, Steppenwolf, Lookingglass, The Neo Futurists, and Chicago Children's Theatre. Sivan worked as the Education & Community Programs Manager at Chicago Children's Theatre for 5 years, and has been teaching Jewishly as the Family Program Coordinator with Tzedek Chicago for the last two years. She is passionate about education and art that empowers the participants, and creates space for their stories to shine. 

MALIK KARIM
Educator and Foodways Coordinator

Malik is a certified pastry chef and an emerging poet in the Chicago arts scene. As a proud Palestinian, his artistry is a celebration of his heritage and a call to challenge the status quo. In the future, Malik hopes to start a land project championing environmental sustainable and food sovereignty. 

ELI NEWELL
Spiritual Director

Eli Newell is an artist, community organizer and Rabbinic & Cantorial student working at the intersections of live storytelling and building grassroots movements. Eli is a lifelong theatre-maker whose works have been seen in Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul and New York, in venues spanning conventional performance spaces, neighborhood streets, industrial sites, and a long-running speakeasy on the Magnificent Mile. Born and raised in the Twin Cities, Eli is a proud, Jewish Lefty Midwesterner through and through, committed to a life of organizing, rehearsing and storytelling for liberation, including with Sunrise Movement, IfNotNow, JVP, Rabbis for Ceasefire, and many autonomous networks of solidarity and care. A frequent ritual leader in several Chicagoland spiritual communities, Eli loves to facilitate, support and train Jewish and interfaith students of all ages to embody, practice and tell sacred-story. elinewell.org

MAYA KOSOVER
Teaching Artist & Program Coordinator

Maya Kosover (she/her) is a community facilitator, artist, and educator based in Chicago. Maya partners with various organizations and community groups to facilitate healing arts workshops for youth, teens and adults -- workshops that tend to our capacities for study, embodiment, connection, radical imagination, and creative agency. She is currently the Director of Learning for Shomeret Shalom, an artist collective member at the Jewish Museum of Chicago, and a facilitator for Studio Pathways.  To learn more about Maya and her work, her learning lineages and communities, visit www.mayakosover.com.

Musical Coordinator Coming Soon

RACHEL ELLISON
Co-Founder

Rachel Ellison (she/her) is an artist, educator, and Judaica maker co-founding Camp Doikayt with husband Dylan and this amazing team. She feels a deep drive to create a new legacy and Jewish narrative for her children and their generation — a Jewish future lived in genuine connection with all people and with the land we live on. Rachel's own path to founding the camp began in the cabins of her childhood summer camp, an experience that shaped her as both a Jew and an artist. Through her ritual art company, Bat Sarah Press, she has spent years exploring Jewish ritual and tradition through Hiddur Mitzvah — the beautification of the mitzvah — crafting custom ketubahs, home blessings, and other Judaica rooted in the richness of the diaspora experience. That same instinct to make ritual tangible and personal is what she brings to Camp Doikayt, building a space where families can form their own genuine connection to Jewish tradition and to each other. At camp, Rachel wears many hats — visioning, producing, web design, and communications (at least until a Gen Z communications wizard comes along to lighten the load — reach out if that's you!).

DYLAN MAYICK
Co-Founder

Bio and photo coming soon…