Asked for her main takeaways from her time on RUACH's staff, Ducky’s first response was, “Gratefulness for an open window into the Jewish tribe."
Dear RUACH Community,
Each of us comes to RUACH, and to RUACH’s Beit Neshama studio, with a story. A history of who we are, and a sense of where we are going.
In community, our stories weave together, and a new scale emerges: the tale of who we are, and where we are going, together. RUACH’s inaugural Director of Intercultural Learning, Evelyn "Ducky" Punch (MSc.), leaves us with a legacy of clarity in this truth.
Ducky teaches a form of Yoga that can’t be described by any one style. Fundamentally, she teaches healthy, healing movement using the body’s natural weight and shape — movement that nurtures the joints, aligns the spine, softens our hard places, and inspires an ever deeper awe of the breath.
One day, RUACH believes, people will look back on this start-up period as the beginning of a movement for peace. A network of Jewish movement and meditation studios that truly embodies RUACH’s mission — connecting seekers of all ages and backgrounds — will have its success measured by the differences, and even disputes, that are recognized, bridged, healed, and uplifted across the intercultural mosaic of our world. Ducky leaves us with a legacy of clarity in this truth, too.
There is a passage in the Zohar that describes the legendary “Four Winds” of the world — the Arba Ruchot, corresponding to the four cardinal directions — as comprising, collectively, a great, singular spirit. This unified Ruach is the spirit that incarnates in bodily form, “the spirit that gives birth, the spirit that eats and drinks” (Toldot 8:64).
This Ruach — like Ducky — belongs, insistently, to humanity. Like Ducky, this Ruach weaves through diverse cultures, experiencing different ways of eating and drinking, different communities of knowledge and practice.
This particular, Jewish community organization has grown and transformed over Ducky's term of engagement: RUACH now has teachers, staff, a board, and, of course, the 50+ people who graced our studio for class during RUACH's free test period this past spring.
Asked for her main takeaways from her time on RUACH's staff, Ducky’s first response was, “Gratefulness for an open window into the Jewish tribe,” and “being exposed to the beauty of the wisdom in the Torah.” Over her years of exposure to Jewish waters, punctuated by spells of immersion, Ducky has read a significant portion of the Five Books of Moses and has studied teachings from the Talmud, various midrashim, and Kabbalistic theology (including the Zohar passage quoted above). Ducky was the first person to observe that RUACH, as an organization, is a living midrash on “Ruach” as a Biblical word. To hear Torah through Ducky's ears is to encounter a spiritual tradition buzzing with life. From her Yoga, science, and nature-loving background, it doesn’t surprise her that the Hebrew words for “wisdom” and “midwife” share a root — yet it moves her deeply still.
Now in Ireland, soon to be in LA, Ducky is continuing to follow her trademark potent synthesis of thoughtful discernment, intuition, and heart for what life’s adventures hold in store. Her “greatest takeaway” from her time in Boston, she shares, “is that the world would be a better, gentler place if everyone took their own version of Shabbat” — a holiday that lights up her imagination, inspires her confidence in Jewish and human resilience, and offers a profound path for intercultural connection.
In this moment of transition, her parting blessing for the RUACH community is “laughter and lightness, and a little Purim sprinkled in each day.”
Ducky — amen. And thank you. You have blessed the Jewish world beyond imagination with blessings whose shape and scale will only continue to be revealed in the years to come.
So really, there’s just one thing left to ask: What Purim costumes are best for posture?
Thank you, Ducky — teacher, colleague, and friend — for everything.
B’shalom, with blessings of peace,
And admiration always,
Yaakov
Ducky and Yaakov on a farewell trip to NYC the Shabbat following Ducky's game-changing term on RUACH's staff.
Comments