Sanctuary

Crown Heights, Brooklyn

Sanctuary

A living room for the living world.

A spiritual home in Brooklyn. We gather through story, song, movement, and food to come back into relationship with ourselves, with each other, and with the world around us.

Come to a gathering What is this place?
Neighbors sitting in a circle on cushions and couches in Sanctuary's living room, under soft pink light
A Rosh Hashanah gathering

What is Sanctuary

Not a community center.
A home.

Sanctuary is a house in Crown Heights where the door is open to all who come with care. We host gatherings that are spiritual, embodied, and educational: meditations and music jams, Shabbat tables and holiday events, salons, prayer labs, Emerald Podcast listening parties, BBQs, cuddle puddles, and picnics with the trees.

Some nights are quiet and deep. Some go until the sun rises. Nearly all of them involve fruit and tea.

What ties them together is an intention: to help each other heal, learn, and remember how to belong in this world.

The world is alive

Everything here is a relative.

There's an old word for how we try to live: animism. It simply means treating the world as alive and worth being in relationship with. Not as a backdrop, not as a resource, but as kin.

You don't need to believe anything in particular to walk in. You just need a desire to connect to something deeper within or around yourself.

  • Source
  • Ancestors
  • Elements
  • Plants
  • Seasons
  • Sound
  • Touch
  • Spirit
  • Each other

Our roots

Rooted in our traditions. Open to everyone.

The two friends who live here and host are Black and Jewish, and those lineages run deep in this house, alongside animist, contemplative, and other wisdom traditions we've learned from with gratitude.

They're where we come from, not a password at the door. Whoever you are and whatever you carry, there's a cushion for you.

How we gather

Five doorways in

Breaking Bread

Shared meals, potlucks, and grills. Food finds its way into much of what we do.

Story & Song

Poems, jams, and drum circles, and the stories that remind us who we really are.

Stillness

Meditation, prayer, and ritual: quieter ways of listening to ourselves and to the world.

Mutual Care

Showing up for each other and for our neighbors, the way our ancestors did.

Movement

Dance, breath, and embodiment practice: letting the body lead us back to ourselves.

Gatherings

What actually happens here

A few of the rhythms we keep coming back to.

Music

Jams & Drum Circles

Bring an instrument, or borrow one of ours. We start with drums, drift into songs, and keep playing as long as the room wants to.

Salon

Music & Poetry Salons

An evening of songs and poems from friends, then an open mic and an open jam. Radical inclusion, mild transcendence.

Practice

Meditation & Prayer

Experiments in stillness and devotion, open to people of any belief or none. Come curious and leave with a practice to take home.

Table

Shabbat & Holy Days

Cozy, co-created celebrations with a little tradition, a lot of song, and a healthy dose of food and hanging out.

Outdoors

Out in the Living World

Tree blessings, barefoot walks, and potlucks in the park, then long evenings around the fire pit in the backyard.

Learning

Listening & Learning

Teachings, texts, and podcasts that crack us open, taken in together and talked over afterward with a pot of tea.

Hear about upcoming gatherings first. Join our WhatsApp Announcements group ↗

Our story

It started around a table.

Sanctuary began with two best friends who became roommates, and then kept inviting people over. One dinner became a Shabbat. A Shabbat became a jam. A jam became a drum circle in the backyard, and somewhere along the way the apartment stopped feeling like an apartment.

Over the years we've hosted well over a hundred gatherings. We learned what anyone who has thrown a good dinner party already knows: there is no replacement for the connections that form in a home, around hosts who love you.

People here aren't consumers or participants. They're part of a community that takes care of each other.

We also weave with other community builders, healers, artists, and organizations across Brooklyn, and our door is open to more of them.

Your hosts

Two friends, one house

Chloé Simone playing guitar on a park bench

Chloé Simone

Co-founder & host

Chloé is the founder of Theory of Enchantment, a practice of chanting, breath, sound, and spiritual counseling that helps people find their voice and use it to build connection. Her work on belonging has reached audiences from TED to Harvard and has been covered by The New York Times, The Atlantic, and NPR.

At Sanctuary she's the one who will get the whole room singing.

Theory of Enchantment ↗
Zach Schaffer sitting cross-legged on sand, hands open

Zach Schaffer

Co-founder & host

Zach is a founder, facilitator, and educator who designs rituals and gatherings that help people find their way back to one another. He co-founded Project Shema, a leading antisemitism education organization rooted in curiosity and compassion, and has spent more than a decade bringing people together across differences.

At Sanctuary, ask him what’s cooking. It’s usually a meal, a ritual, or an introduction.

zachschaffer.com ↗

Come by

Our door is open.

Come to a gathering, bring a friend, a snack, or an offering. If you're a community weaver, artist, or organization dreaming up something together, we'd love to hear from you too.

Join us on WhatsApp ↗

Our announcements group: the best way to hear about upcoming gatherings.