Balak 5785: Deeper Meanings

Balak 5785: Deeper Meanings

Jul 10, 2025 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

I was recently watching a television interview with a woman in her 60s. Her husband, about the same age, still works long hours, though they’re already quite financially wealthy. “If he says to me on his deathbed that he regrets working too much,” the woman said, “I’ll kill him.”

It’s a funny line, of course. What makes it funny is that, in this imagined scene, the man is dying, so the words, “I’ll kill him” don’t carry literal weight. Yet, to quote the great sage Homer Simpson, “It’s funny because it’s true.” The word “kill” here functions as an exaggerated metaphor: The emotional distress the woman would feel (and, perhaps, already feels) on account of her husband’s choices about spending his time on work are existential—they’re affecting their lives in a significant way, so much so that she’ll be upset enough to kill, even though she isn’t really going to do that. So, it’s funny—but it’s also true.

Now, those same words uttered in a different context could carry a different meaning: If two people were in a fight and one shouted at the other, “I’ll kill you,” and then, God forbid, did so, their statement would probably be used as evidence against them at a murder trial. In this case, based on the context and the subsequent action, the meaning of the words is not metaphorical, but literal. Not funny, but still true.

We encounter questions of literal versus metaphorical meanings all the time: “Life is a rollercoaster.” “She’s a walking encyclopedia.” “Like a bull in a china shop.” We don’t mean these words literally; we employ the metaphors as idiomatic figures of speech.

Metaphorical speech is the starting point for midrash—which many would argue is the essence of Torah study itself. As a teacher of mine, Rabbi Baruch Feldstern, said decades ago in a class at the Pardes Institute on the Book of Samuel, “Jews don’t read the Bible; Jews read the Bible the way the Rabbis read the Bible.” Which is to say, understanding the plain or literal meaning of a verse is not the goal of a Rabbinic approach to reading the Bible. Instead, the project of the ancient Rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash was to play with the text, to find deeper meanings within it—to push the limits of interpretation to their most creative ends, but not so far that they would break. (If an interpretation were completely unmoored from the meaning of the words, then it wouldn’t pass the smell test.)

A classic Talmudic discussion goes to the heart of the matter. The Mishnah (Shabbat 6:4), teaches: “One may not go out with a sword, bow, shield, club, or spear [on Shabbat] and if one does go out, they incur a sin-offering [because the person is carrying them, which is prohibited on Shabbat; if they were considered clothing, however, then the action wouldn’t be carrying, and thus would be permitted]. Rabbi Eliezer says: they are ornaments for the person wearing them [meaning that they are, in fact, clothing, and thus permitted to wear on Shabbat]. But the Sages say, they are nothing but a disgrace, as it is said, ‘And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore’ (Isaiah 2:4).” The Sages’ view, contra Rabbi Eliezer, is that weapons of war are not clothing.

A Talmudic discussion ensues (Shabbat 63a) in which the later Rabbis try to understand both positions. Explaining Rabbi Eliezer’s view, they cite as a prooftext the verse from Psalms (45:4), “Gird your sword upon your thigh, mighty one, your glory and your splendor.” The Talmud continues, “Rav Kahana said to Mar, son of Rav Huna: Is that really a proof? This verse is written in reference to matters of Torah and should be interpreted as a metaphor.” That is, according to Rav Kahana, when the verse from Psalms talks about a “sword,” what is obviously meant is Torah. If so, how could it support Rabbi Eliezer’s view? Mar replied, “Nevertheless, a verse does not depart from its literal meaning.”

What’s striking in this passage is that the peshat, or plain meaning of the verse in Psalms, is treated as an afterthought. “Of course the verse is talking about Torah and not a sword,” Mar seems to be saying, “but still, we do have to concede a little bit to the unembellished meaning of the text.” But it’s the exception that proves the rule: In general, the default preference in Torah study is for thicker, richer, more creative and more intertextual interpretations.

That brings us to Parashat Balak, and specifically to the words of Balaam, which are the subject of much Midrashic discussion. “How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob, your dwelling places, O Israel” (Num. 24:5) is one that may be familiar. Yes, it may literally have referred to their tents, but metaphorically the Rabbis understand this as an allusion to the site of the Temple.

A particularly timely example comes earlier, when Balaam compares Israel to a lioness (Num. 23:24)

Lo, a people that rises like a lioness,
Leaps up like a lion

Predictably, the Midrash understands this verse as referring to Torah study, alluding to rising up early to recite the Shema and perform mitzvot. Yet attuned readers may recognize the words “a people that rises like a lioness” from recent events. In Hebrew those words are am k’lavi yakum, and the name of the Israeli military operations against Iran last month was Am K’lavi. And in that sense, the Israel Defense Forces were clearly not reading these words as a (perhaps attenuated) metaphor about Torah, but as something closer to the plain text itself (which, of course, is a metaphor to begin with).

All of this is perhaps a reflection of the challenge Balaam presents us overall: The gap that can exist between intention and utterance, between spoken or written words and the deeper meanings they may not only convey, but arouse and inspire in us. Likewise, it reflects the ever-flowing possibilities of abundance inherent in our study of Torah, of language, and of our lives—which are lived in and through language. As Ouaknin writes, “The real meaning of a text, as it addresses itself to the interpreter, does not depend on accidental factors concerning the author and his [sic] original audience. Or, at least, these conditions do not exhaust its meaning… In fact, it is not the text that is understood but the reader. He understands himself.”

Chukat 5785: In(di)visible

Chukat 5785: In(di)visible

Jul 3, 2025 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Earlier this week, my middle son and I woke up bright and early in order to beat Chicago rush hour traffic and make it to Champaign, Illinois in time for his orientation/registration day. While our older son is also a student at U of I, the new student process then was entirely online because of the pandemic. So this was a new experience.

Having grown up in another Big Ten college town (Ann Arbor) and spent much of my career in higher education, there was something reassuringly familiar about walking on the sleepy quad in the summer, entering the student Union building, and witnessing the beautifully diverse array of students and families on hand. At a time when universities have become sites of so much contention, this was a visceral reminder of their incredible positive possibilities.

[Related side note: Last year I published an article in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s journal, Sources, entitled, “American Jews & Our Universities: Back to Basics.” I’m pleased to share that it was recognized as the runner-up in the Excellence in North American Jewish History category of the Simon Rockower Awards for Excellence in Jewish Journalism. Shout-out in particular to the journal editor, my old college friend Dr. Claire Sufrin, for her excellent guidance.]

After a morning of the expected sessions (how to pay your bill, how to use the health center, getting oriented to your department/school), my son eventually went to register for courses. I waited in the campus bookstore (always on brand). As I perused the shelves, I came across a copy of “The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison.” This was a delight, as Ellison is someone I’ve always wanted to read more of but for whatever reason have never gotten around to. I wasn’t disappointed.

For starters, I discovered that we shared some common interests: He too had studied music before embarking on a career as a writer and academic. Additionally—and perhaps related, or maybe not—Ellison and I share a preoccupation with questions about the nature of the American experiment, particularly the experiences of the minority groups with which we each respectively identify, while simultaneously claiming and holding fast to the label “American.” 

In 1970 Ellison published an essay in Time magazine entitled, “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks.” He observes that one of the enormous contributions of African-American culture to American life in general has been “to remind us that the world is ever unexplored, and that while complete mastery of life is mere illusion, the real secret of the game is to make life swing.” (The musician in me thrills to that metaphor.) Imagining an American history without African-Americans—an idea he dismisses as objectionable on both ideological and pragmatic grounds—Ellison observes that such a history would yield the absence of a “tragic knowledge which we try ceaselessly to evade: that the true subject of democracy is not simply material well-being, but the extension of the democratic process in the direction of perfecting itself.” And then he adds, “The most obvious test and clue to that perfection is the inclusion, not assimilation, of the black [sic] man.” 

There is much to say: About the meaning of democracy as including, but not limited to, material well-being; about the essential energy of American democracy as aimed at an ongoing, asymptotic quest to perfect itself as it expands to represent everyone it serves, ever more fully; about the striking resonance of Ellison’s notion of inclusion without assimilation with the experience of Jews—in America and, really, every place. (It’s also striking that the preface to this edition of Ellison’s essays was written by Saul Bellow, who, recalling a summer he and Ellison shared a rental house in Dutchess County, comments on some similar motions in the stories of African-Americans and American Jews.)

I’m writing all of this, first and foremost of course, because it’s July 4. We could leave it at that and it would be fine. But these reflections are also meant to explore connections between our lived experience and our never-ending exploration of the Torah. Which brings us to our Torah portion, Chukat, and particularly its very last line: “The Israelites marched on and encamped in the steppes of Moab, across the Jordan from Jericho” (Num. 22:1). 

The people have just come through several encounters with foreign nations, including military victories. They have taken possession of land on the eastern side of the Jordan, and they will stay there until the end of the Torah. This last sentence frames several events to come in next week’s Torah portion, including Balak’s engagement of Balaam to curse the people, and the violent episode involving the sexual/marital relationships between the Israelites and Midianites. 

Which is all to say that one of the animating questions of this entire section of the Torah is something like this: What does it mean to be an Israelite? How, if at all, can others join this group? How does the people relate to the other peoples around it—and how do those peoples relate to them? 

These are bigger questions than this space allows for. But by way of conclusion, I want to bring in a teaching of Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, the starting point of which is a verse from earlier in Chukat (Num. 15:14). Here’s what he says: “There are 600,000 letters in the Torah, against which there are also 600,000 root-souls… Therefore, each Jew is connected to one letter in the Torah… Each letter represents the divine element in each person. It is actually the very letter from which their soul derives. It is this letter that pours forth divine blessings and holy vital force.” 

What is so significant about this teaching to me is the notion that every one of us has a place in the Torah—a spiritual heritage, a home in the universe, despite even millennia of diasporic existence. That sense of spiritual groundedness is essential to any further discussion of political at-homeness—for Jews or anyone else. Perhaps the great American jurist Learned Hand put it best, in his short but essential speech from 1944: “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.” 

As I have written before, I believe our spiritual practices are what Tocqueville had in mind when he wrote about the “habits of the heart” essential to democratic life. We claim our spiritual inheritance, we live lives of Torah, in order to be both fully ourselves and fully human. That is the ground from which flows the rest of our lives, as individuals, as communities, as nations, and as humanity. May we renew ourselves in that practice, and help every image of God to find their place in the family of things.

Shabbat shalom, and a meaningful Independence Day to all who observe.

 

 

 

 

Korach 5785: Hit the Drum

Korach 5785: Hit the Drum

Jun 26, 2025 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

If you were in band class at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor in the 1980s and 90s, you probably had Robert Albritton for a teacher. And if you had Mr. Albritton for a teacher, you probably remember some of his many colorful sayings. More than 30 years later, my brothers and I still find occasion to recite them to each other. One of our favorites was what Mr. A would occasionally say to a percussionist by way of encouragement: “Young man/woman, Hit the drum! I promise it won’t hit you back.”

Naturally, this phrase came to mind the other night as I attended a moving performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s Requiem with the Chicago Symphony, led by Riccardo Muti. While the entire piece is one of the crown jewels of the classical repertoire, its most memorable section by a mile is the Dies Irae, a truly terrifying piece of music set to terrifying words about the “day of wrath” that will “break up the world into ash” and “how much trembling there will be.” The words are brought to life by the full orchestra, soloists, and double chorus, who perform music that feels like a freight train on a roller coaster at maximum volume, punctuated by the repeated thunderous booms of two bass drums and the tympani played as loud as humanly possible. Mr. Albritton would love it. (And kids, I can testify with my own eyes: the drum did not hit back.)

While the piece contains many moments of beauty that offset this fire-breathing energy, theologically speaking the Dies Irae is pretty representative of the liturgical text of this requiem mass overall. The view of the Divine that Verdi presents here is not, on the whole, a comforting one: It’s a lot of Day of Judgment, prayers for salvation from a fiery fate and the like, concluding with the words of the Libera me, “Deliver me, Lord, from eternal death on that awful day. Deliver me.” While we have some of this kind of thing in traditional Jewish liturgy (most notably, perhaps, on Rosh Hashanah), on the whole the portrait of God presented here lands as a striking contrast to the gentler, more loving, less judgmental, and less angry conception that predominates much of contemporary Jewish theology—including the approach we teach here at IJS.

Which makes sense. I mean, today we can choose what kind of service we want to go to—or even make for ourselves. And while Verdi’s music is breathtaking, it’s hard for me to imagine many folks in my world vibing with a vision of the Divine as a terrible, destructive force. To put it crassly: that view of God just isn’t good for business.

And yet, as I write these words, there is terror and violence all around. A war has just taken place between Israel and Iran involving weapons whose destructive power were unimaginable in Verdi’s time. And that war comes on top of a war between Israel and Hezbollah, which of course came on top of the ongoing war in Gaza, with its enormously devastating toll. Which of course came on top of the October 7 massacre. And this is to say nothing of the terrors of ICE raids and deportations, or attacks on vulnerable minorities (including Jews) here in the US, or the fear and trembling at the destructive power of Mother Earth in the form of tornados and hurricanes and punishing heat waves, all of which we have managed to make even worse through our own collective action and inaction.

While we may listen to Verdi’s Requiem and think, “Well that’s not a very sunny view,” all we have to do is take a look at the news and we might find ourselves saying, “Maybe he wasn’t so wrong.”

Parashat Korach is not only about the story of a rebellion against Moses. At its heart lies the latent terror that can be present in the collective human encounter with the Divine, with the source of life—which is also the source of death. In this Torah portion we read of the earth swallowing people up and sending them down to she’ol, and a plague of Divine wrath that takes the lives of 14,000 people. At its core, perhaps, is the people’s anguished cry to Moses: “‘Lo, we perish! We are lost, all of us lost! Everyone who so much as ventures near YHVH’s Tabernacle must die. Alas, we are doomed to perish!” To paraphrase, perhaps: How are we supposed to do this—to live together with the Holy One in our midst, to trust our leadership and one another? We can’t seem to pull it off.

In response, the Torah offers us a system of social-spiritual order: The kohanim will be specialists in God-service, as it were, assisted by the Levites, so to that the whole camp can function without further risk of plagues and death. (Note: Ibn Ezra comments that this whole episode comes out of order, and in fact occurred before the people left the wilderness of Sinai.) In exchange for receiving special gifts from the people, God instructs that the Aaron that “you and your sons alone shall bear any guilt connected with your priesthood.”

This is a solution, of course, but it’s far from perfect. Leaders who are granted power and privilege then face their inevitable temptations—which can just lead to a repetition of the cycle that started all of this to begin with. This leads Rabbi Kalonymos Kalman Epstein (1753-1825) to interpret this charge to the kohanim this way: “You must always mindfully tend to the concern that you are doing this sacred service for your own glory and enjoyment. You must regularly engage in deep discernment as to whether your intention is aligned with that of the Creator.” And, being a Hasid, Rabbi Epstein sees this as not only the work of the kohanim, but, in the nascent democratic spirit of the age in which he lived, the spiritual labor of us all.

It seems to me that a good deal of that regular practice of reflection and discernment involves touching in with our fears and acknowledging them: fears of violence, death, destruction, and loss, or even of their less extreme expressions—fear of rejection, humiliation, not belonging. The embers of these fires are ever-present—that comes with being human—so we can show ourselves some compassion for having them. Yet I would suggest the work that we are called to do is to acknowledge those fears and then choose life-giving responses—in our words and our actions. I think that’s what Verdi did with his music, and I bless us all that we may do it with the music we make too.

Shabbat Reflection – Shelach 5785

Shabbat Reflection – Shelach 5785

Jun 20, 2025 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

A few months ago, my dear friend and synagogue rabbi Ari Hart delivered a sermon that opened with a critique of an aspect of some (perhaps a lot?) of contemporary mindfulness practice: nonjudgmental acceptance. Now, I hasten to add that Ari is a participant in our Clergy Leadership Program cohort that launches next month, and he was not offering this critique to knock Jewish spiritual practices grounded in mindfulness. He was pointing out something on which, frankly, I agree with him: The Torah and Judaism aren’t simply about accepting what is, but about changing our lives and the world to what they can and should be. If we’re going to practice mindfulness, it should be in the service not just of acceptance of what is, but bringing about what might be.

I don’t think that should be a controversial statement, yet I imagine it might prompt at least a moment of going, “Huh” in our minds. It should come as no surprise that as mindfulness practice has become commercialized it has emphasized the self-acceptance element—”You are absolutely perfect, just as you are”—and de-emphasized the self-improvement aspect—”with room for improvement,” as Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, was known to teach. The former is good for sales; the latter, not so much.

Twenty years ago, when I was a freshly minted rabbi who just arrived in Evanston to work at Northwestern University Hillel, I came up with the idea of hanging a banner to advertise for the High Holidays. Intuitively, I decided to put a question on the banner, rather than just making an announcement: “What will you do better this year?” While the banner got a lot of positive response, one of the other staff members came to me with some concern: “I’m worried about the word ‘better.’ It’s kind of judgmental. It might push people away. What about ‘What will you do different this year?'” I responded, “It’s called the Day of Judgment. It’s okay to be judgmental.” (I was younger and brasher then.) Clearly this tension between non-judgmental acceptance of what is and gentle judgmental aspiration of what might be isn’t a new conversation.

A keyword in Parashat Shelach (Numbers 13:1-15:41) is the verb latur. “Send people to scout (latur) the land,” the Holy One tells Moses (13:1). He does so, and in his charge he elaborates on the mission of scouting: “See what kind of country it is” (13:18). The scouts are meant to take an honest look at the land and its inhabitants and bring back a report. They do so, of course, but famously they add their own commentary, full of judgmentalism and self-doubt: “The country that we traversed and scouted is one that devours its inhabitants. All the people that we saw in it are of astonishingly great size… We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them” (13:32-33). We know what comes next: the imposition of a 40-year period of wandering in the wilderness, so that the entire generation of the Exodus might die off.

Yet the word latur comes back at the very end of the Torah portion, in the mitzvah of tzitzit. By looking at them, the Torah says, v’lo toturu, we should be reminded not to follow after our hearts and our eyes “in your urge to stray” (15:39, JPS translation). Rashi, following the Midrash, connects this instance of latur with that of the scouts. As Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav puts it: “They are a method of self-rebuke, reminding us to fulfill the mitzvot and not simply follow the desires of our hearts and eyes.”

We can interpret these words harshly, as though they involve discounting and denying bodily sensations altogether. But I think that misses the point. The larger message here, it seems to me, is that our spiritual practice is meant to help us see clearly—both what is present in our mind-hearts and, gently, what of that which is present is not serving us well.

Thank God, we are created with desires generated by our bodies and our hearts. We have emotions, we have thoughts, we have imaginations, and we are able to experience an incredible range of feelings and sensations. The point of mindfulness practice in a Jewish idiom is to see all of these things clearly—so that we can make choices that reduce harm and suffering and, wisely and skillfully, bring about something better than what might be right now.

Rabbis, Cantors, and Kohanot Seek Spiritual Renewal in Mindful Practice

Rabbis, Cantors, and Kohanot Seek Spiritual Renewal in Mindful Practice

Jun 17, 2025 | Blog

Announcing the 2025-2026 Cohort of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s Clergy Leadership Program

On July 20, 42 Jewish spiritual leaders from around the world will gather at the Pearlstone Retreat Center to meditate, pray, sing, study, and practice mindful movement, kicking off the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) 2025-2026 Clergy Leadership Program (CLP).

With nearly 600 alumni now bringing mindfulness practices to synagogues, campuses, schools, organizations, and communities throughout the country, IJS’s flagship course has been reshaping the landscape of American Judaism—one “mindful moment” at a time.

The clergy of the CLP will spend the next 18 months together, in person and on Zoom, learning and practicing a variety of Jewish spiritual practices grounded in mindfulness in a supportive community of practice. The goal is to nurture their spiritual lives, foster greater calm and resilience, and expand their skills in cultivating consciousness and character in their leadership. They’ll also learn to embody mindful Jewish spiritual practice in their communities, fostering greater spirituality and wellbeing for everyone.

One of the cohort members, a freelance rabbi and community builder, looks forward to “being able to have a stronger mindfulness practice—to ground me, to allow me to embrace the magic, to help others to do the same.” This program, she says, would provide connection, structure, and a vessel for growth for me as I create the next season of my rabbinic work and life.”

A wide spectrum of leadership

The 2025 cohort includes an array of ordained rabbis, cantors, and kohanot (Hebrew priestesses) in positions of spiritual leadership—as synagogue clergy, educators, Hillel professionals, activists, ritualists, executives, and entrepreneurs. They span the denominational spectrum and serve communities across the U.S., Israel, and Europe.

The Institute for Jewish Spirituality celebrates the diversity of this group, which includes Jews of Color, Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews, LGBTQ+ folks, people with disabilities, and individuals with a range of political perspectives.

The program will include affinity groups led by faculty who hold each identity, and will feature an updated curriculum incorporating more teachings from people with historically marginalized identities alongside traditional Jewish text. IJS is working to further refine a pedagogy of inclusion that enables each participant to feel that they are being held and cared for in the fullness of their humanity, that their spiritual needs are being met, and that their unique living Torah can inspire and elevate us all.

Learning to lead through wholeness

The core practices of the program—prayer, song, chant, meditation, embodied practice, tikkun middot (character refinement) practices, and Torah study—are informed by various strands within the Jewish mystical tradition and serve to deepen participants’ spiritual awareness, authenticity, equanimity, self-compassion, and resilience.

When clergy learn to practice mindful leadership, enriched by Jewish wisdom, they can more skillfully engage their inner lives as a powerful force for personal and collective transformation. By leading from a place of inner wholeness, clarity, balance, and love, they can more readily give of themselves and guide the spiritual evolution of others.

CLP alumna Cantor Kerith Spencer-Shapiro, said of her experience:

“The CLP… cohort changed my clergy life, reinvigorating and lifting up my personal prayer practice and allowing me ‘permission’ to bring together all of the spiritual elements of my whole person. I am ever grateful to IJS for continuing to be a foundational part of who I have grown into as a clergy member and meditation teacher.”

The program faculty includes Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, Rabbi Miriam Margles, Rabbi Dorothy Richman, and Cantor Lizzie Shammash—each of whom is a seasoned teacher of Jewish spiritual practices grounded in mindfulness.

A balm for overcoming burnout

Beyond catalyzing Jewish spiritual renewal, the program is designed to meet a pressing need: Many clergy describe feeling depleted and overwhelmed after leading through years of turmoil from COVID, political strife, the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, and rising antisemitism worldwide.

Kohenet Amanda Nube, a Jewish educator at Chochmat HaLev, a Jewish Renewal congregation in Berkeley, California, wrote: “I think being in a cohort of mindful Jewish clergy at this moment, in this year and coming years, is what we ALL NEED. Cultivating mindfulness of our strengths, our weaknesses, and our leadership could not be more critical for me personally at this very moment in time and history.”

IJS will tailor the 2025-2026 curriculum to hold participants amidst their pain and overwhelm, and help them refill their inner reservoirs, restore their balance, deepen their resilience, and lead with greater clarity, responsiveness, and courage.

For many, this is a sanctuary of self-care after years of caring for others, and an opportunity to revitalize their service with enriched resilience and a sense of sacred purpose.

At a recent convening of CLP alumni, Rabbi Naamah Kelman, herself an alumna of the program and former Dean of Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, urged clergy to nurture themselves before serving others: “In these moments of darkness and despair,” she said, “I think we need to—as clergy, as caretakers, as leaders of our community—find that place of light within ourselves.”

The members of CLP 2025-2026 are ready to do just that:

Cantor Tracy Fishbein, Cantor at The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Shalom, in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote: “Like many in 2024, I find myself often overwhelmed and exhausted by the constant giving of myself to those in both my personal and professional lives. I am hopeful that this program can give me some tools to cope with the overwhelm and reconnect with my own holy spark that is sometimes lost in the work that I do. I am hopeful that this program will allow me to grow my patience for my children, colleagues, and congregants.”

Preparing for the next generation of Jewish engagement

IJS is also preparing clergy to inspire the next generation of young people to connect to Jewish life in new and sacred ways. At a time when many Jewish communities are shrinking, IJS is growing—and that’s because there’s more interest in the healing power of Jewish mindfulness than ever before, especially among youth.

Jes Heppler, one of the young IJS leaders, said: “IJS is meeting a spiritual hunger that many young people have today—the desire to figure out what Judaism should look like in our lives.”

By helping clergy tap into this yearning and nurture it across the U.S. and abroad, IJS is building on this valuable momentum and sparking a resurgence of contemporary Jewish spiritual life.

IJS is particularly grateful to the Righteous Persons Foundation and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Family Foundation for their support of the Clergy Leadership Program.

2025-2026 CLERGY LEADERSHIP PROGRAM COHORT

Lisa Arbiser – SAJ: Judaism That Stands For All (New York, NY)
Caryn Aviv – Judaism Your Way (Denver, CO)
Rachel Barenblat – Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (Williamstown, MA)
Deana Berezin – Temple Israel (Omaha, NE)
Vera Broekhuysen – Congregation Beth El of the Sudbury River Valley (North Andover, MA)
Daniel Burg – Beth Am Synagogue (Baltimore, MD)
Cornelia Dalton – Westchester Jewish Center (Westchester, NY)
Devorah Felder-Levy – Congregation Shir Hadash (Los Gatos, CA)
Tracy Fishbein – The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Sholom (Nashville, TN)
Andy Gordon – Bolton Street Synagogue (Baltimore, MD)
Yosef Goldman – Freelance Spiritual Artist (Brooklyn, NY)
Ari Hart – Skokie Valley Agudath Jacob (Skokie, IL)
Jordan Hersh – Beth Sholom Congregation (Frederick, MD)
Jennifer Kaluzny – Temple Israel (West Bloomfield, MI)
Lindsay Kanter – Temple Emanuel (Kensington, MD)
Talia Kaplan – Congregation Beth Shalom (Overland Park, KS)
Georgette Kennebrae – Freelance Rabbi and Community Builder (Porto Santo, Portugal)
Todd Kipnis – Temple Shaaray Tefila (New York, NY)
Chaim Koritzinsky – Congregation Etz Chayim (Palo Alto, CA)
Judy Kummer – Freelance Lifecycle Officiant, Spiritual Care Counselor, Eldercare Programming (Boston, MA)
Sari Laufer – Stephen Wise Temple (Los Angeles, CA)
Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg – Shir Tikva (Minneapolis, MN)
Andrew Mandel – Central Synagogue (New York, NY)
Rachel Marks – Temple Beth Israel (Skokie, IL)
David Markus – Congregation Shir Ami (Greenwich, CT)
Oded Mazor – Kehilat Kol HaNeshama (Jerusalem, Israel)
Steven Nathan – Lehigh University Office of Jewish Student Life (Bethlehem, PA)
Amanda Nube – Chochmat HaLev (Berkeley, CA)
Sam Rosen – Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (New York, NY)
Benjamin Ross – Temple Shaaray Tefila (White Plains, NY)
Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi – Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation (Baltimore, MD)
Josh Schreiber – Congregation Agudath Achim (Taunton, MA)
Michael Schwab – North Suburban Synagogue Beth El (Highland Park, IL)
Philip Sherman – BJBE (Deerfield, IL)
Ariana Silverman – Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue (Detroit, MI)
Bradley Solmsen – Park Avenue Synagogue (New York, NY)
Danielle Stillman – Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT)
Marcia Tilchin – Jewish Collaborative of Orange County (Orange County, CA)
Naomi Weiss – Congregation Kol Shofar (Sausalito, CA)
Harriette Wimms – The JOC Mishpacha Project (Baltimore, MD)
Ariel Wolpe – Ma’alot (Atlanta, GA)
Lana Zilberman-Soloway – Congregation Or Ami (Westlake Village, CA)

Josh in Conversation with Yiscah Smith

Josh in Conversation with Yiscah Smith

Jun 13, 2025 | Blog

We are grateful to Yiscah Smith for sharing her insights with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.

Renowned spiritual teacher and author Yiscah Smith has spent a lifetime guiding seekers toward deeper authenticity, inner peace, and connection with the Divine. In her newest work, Planting Seeds of the Divine, she offers a rich and soulful roadmap for cultivating God-consciousness from within, drawing on centuries of Jewish wisdom and her own lived experience. If you would like a copy of Yiscah’s book, you can purchase it here.