I have a very exciting announcement to make.

But first, let me set the stage.  We have long believed that cultivating mindful Jewish leaders could have a profound and even transformational impact on Jewish communal life.   However, one of the persistent questions we have struggled with has been how to help alumni of our cohort programs transmit the practices that we have found so personally meaningful to their communities who are also seeking.  The obstacles are many: overwhelming busy-ness, a lack of confidence in teaching the practices, Jewish organizational culture, lack of support, just to name a few.

Over the years, we have developed various tools to help address these obstacles.   Starting this fall, we will have a new one to add to our repertoire.

The John Templeton Foundation has given us a major grant to support an innovative, national program to promote character development through mindfulness and tikkun middot practice in targeted Jewish communities led by Institute-trained rabbis, cantors, educators, mindfulness teachers, and community leaders.  Over the next three years, we will work with 28 Jewish communities to bring a mindful approach to cultivating desirable behaviors or character traits (such as generosity, patience, truth-telling and humility) into the culture of these communities.

There are three significant innovations to this program.  The first is that we will be providing training to help leaders bring a specific practice to their communities in a way that reflects the unique culture and realities of that particular community.   Participants in the program will be given curricula, in-person trainings, regular webinar support and targeted consultations, all with the support of the other members of the cohort. Secondly, we will be exploring what happens when we make a systemic connection between strengthening individual character development and communal norms and culture.  This will give us the opportunity to learn more about how transformation works along the spectrum of change within an individual, in interpersonal relationships, in institutions and in society at large.  And thirdly, we will be pioneering a new approach to mussar that is grounded in mindfulness practice.

Rabbi Marc Margolius will be the director of the program.  For more information, please visit the program page.

That a non-Jewish foundation with the clout of the Templeton Foundation has decided to invest in our exploration is just thrilling.  We are hopeful that this will significantly improve the tools we can offer our alumni in helping to revitalize Jewish life.

For more information on the Templeton Foundation’s work, please click here.

Recently, I had the opportunity to test out a pet theory of mine and to see if it held any water.  I was excited and nervous:  what if this whole idea just sounded nice in my head but didn’t have any traction on the ground?

For the past three years or so, I have been interested in the juxtaposition of justice work and contemplative practices.  I had been leading a variety of service-learning trips, mostly with college students in the Global South, and also doing local volunteer work, helping a family of refugees from Burma start to make a new life for themselves in the US.  I had also been teaching meditation.  I wondered:  could there be a connection between these two worlds?

Perhaps combining social justice with contemplative practice could help make sure that meditation and prayer and learning don’t turn into self-indulgent, self-satisfied activities that are only about personal fulfillment.  And perhaps bringing contemplative practices to justice work could help ensure that activism is more creative, more sustainable and more grounded in the values it endeavors to hold.

At our Jewish Meditation Teacher Training retreat in November, I had the first opportunity to share some of my ideas and I was pleased with the positive reception.  But in some ways, I felt like I was preaching to the proverbial choir.  Many of the participants in the program are already involved in various forms of social change and all of them have a strong meditation practice.  All I had to do was connect the dots.

But this winter I had the opportunity to be the scholar in residence for Repair the World’s Fellow program.  This training was for twelve outstanding professionals who are leading service learning programs across the country.  They came to the training without any a priori interest in contemplative practices.  They were looking for tools to be more effective teachers, activists and organizers.

To my great delight, they got it right away.  They understood that, in the words of Paul Auster, “the inner and the outer could not be separated except by doing great damage to the truth.”  Paying attention to our inner lives – to what is difficult, to our own inner shadow, to the process of reflection – is the same thing as paying attention to the areas that need fixing out in the world, just on a different level.  And bringing a loving, gentle awareness to the areas of brokenness, both inner and outer, can open possibilities of healing and transformation in beautiful and surprising ways.

This is just the beginning.  Stay tuned for more…

What our mentors didn’t tell us is that we might find one, single verse through which we would strive to give that message in new ways, over and over again. I would have found that instruction to be frighteningly limiting, overwhelmingly challenging, and confusing. How could one verse yield new aspects of my one teaching, endlessly?

And yet, that is exactly what I am learning this year through my study and teaching* of the Birkat Avraham, Rabbi Avraham Weinberg (the third), as part of the Institute’s “Torah Study for the Soul,” created by Rabbi Jonathan Slater. Through his own study, Rabbi Slater discovered that every week, likely during the Seudah Shleesheet (the third meal on Shabbat afternoon – a special, tender time for study and prayer), Rabbi Weinberg would give a drash on the coming week’s sedra (Torah portion), through the lens of one particular verse: Psalm 69:14. “Va’ani tefilati Adonai et ratzon; Elohim b’rov hasdechah aneini b’emet yisheicha. As for me, may my prayer come to You, O YHVH, at a favorable moment; Elohim, in your abundant love, answer me with Your sure deliverance.” Psalm 69, verse 14 was for the Birkat Avraham a never-ending fountain of inspiration, truth and delight.

So what is the message, endlessly given, through a reading of these twelve words, turned over again and again, deconstructed, reimagined and variously emphasized, to yield an ever new presentation of the central insight at the core of Rabbi Weinberg’s soul?

Well, in truth there are a few core teachings that Rabbi Weinberg shares through the lens of this verse, but one of them is this: We have the power to work with our minds in such a way as to see God unfolding through all events that happen to us. We pray for the entrance into that awareness. Any time our prayer reveals to us the fundamental and overriding reality of hesed (love) is indeed, a favorable moment; and it is this that delivers us from suffering and delusion.

Now, this is not likely to be a message one hears once and “gets,” even through the brilliant investigation and serious Torah play of Rabbi Weinberg. Rather, it is a message one might hear and perhaps be inspired to try embodying through contemplative, devotional practice. But then, inevitably, the clarity of the teaching will slip away, and one will need to hear it yet again from the mouth of one whose life embodies it. Such reinforcement, such refinement is necessary for the constant deconditioning and reconditioning of our habits of perception. Which may be one reason Rabbi Weinberg, in his wisdom, comes back to share this teaching in so many different ways.

I am grateful for Rabbi Slater’s inspired translation and commentary of the Birkat Avraham, and am delighted to hear the echoes of Rabbi Slater’s one sermon through this Torah, as well. Curious? Subscribe! (email jonathan@jewishspirituality.org).

* I, like others in the Institute network, am teaching Birkat Avraham this year every week. That nearly twenty people show up every Tuesday morning at 8 am from far and wide, even through a New England winter, tells me that this year’s “Torah Study for the Soul” is truly inspired.

- Nancy Flam
Email newsletter February 2013

If you pressed further, to ask if Jews pray directly to God, with their own words, outside of the synagogue or recognized ritual moment, you would likely get a negative response.  “We don’t do that! That’s how ‘they’ pray”. But, there is a long history of Jewish personal prayer, expressed directly to God. These are prayers of joy and thanksgiving, of sorrow and hopelessness, of need and anticipation. Some of these prayers include petitions – “please help me” – but some are simply a statement of the truth – “this is how I feel. Are You there?” Despite this history, Jewish personal prayer as spiritual practice is hardly known, and even less engaged in (or at least unreported!).

The absence of such prayer in Jewish life undermines the potential for communal and liturgical prayer to be meaningful. It is very hard to bring up the energy to pray – even if using someone else’s words – if one has no experience in prayer. Its absence also drains much of Jewish religious life of its vital energy. We may mouth words of prayer, but they will have no direction, no expectation of being received, no sense that they mean anything beyond a connection to tradition.

The Institute – under Rabbi Nancy Flams’s leadership – has begun an ambitious project: to make prayer a recognized, accepted and popular Jewish practice within our community in the next ten years (ambitious indeed!). One step toward that goal is to identify practices – Jewish practices – of personal prayer that we believe might be accessible and meaningful for contemporary Jews. Another step is to work together, practicing in community, experimenting with the traditional liturgy, to plumb its potential as a transformative prayer practice. A small group of participants in the project (all leaders in the field of personal and communal prayer and prayer-leadership) is now taking on those practices to “test drive” them, to learn about them. Our goal is to map out a number of prayer practices – traditional and contemporary, liturgical and personal – in the hopes of making it easier to teach them and to support individuals as they seek to deepen their experience in making prayer a spiritual practice.

In mapping these prayer practices, we are investigating first our own experiences:  what was it like; what happened; what did it feel like; what happened afterward; what impediments to engaging in the practice did I experience, and what facilitated it, what was the impact on my life in the world, my relationships with others, my awareness of the needs of others, etc. Slowly, over time and practice, we expect to be able to formulate clearly what the practice is, why one might engage in this practice, what might be an expected outcome, and how to work with the practice over time.

Each prayer practice may have a different goal: one might be to draw closer to God, another to expand consciousness, another to open the heart to suffering and inspire compassion and action, yet another for liturgical prayer to be a transformative, contemplative experience. And, all of the practices may include all of the different elements. We are just beginning to look, to investigate and map the practices.

What is clear, at least so far, is that in deepening our own personal prayer-lives in these ways, we are becoming even more deeply connected to the tradition, awake to its potential and inspired in our spiritual lives. Making prayer a practice that is regular, focused, with goals against which one can clarify one’s intention and sense inner growth, can revive the spiritual life of the Jewish people. That is surely something worth praying for.

- Jonathan Slater

February 2013 email newsletter

It is interesting that it took a snowstorm to turn New York City into Jerusalem on a Friday evening.

Like many people who have spent time in Jerusalem, one of things I love the most is the way Friday afternoons come into the Jewish parts of the city.  Bit by bit, the stores close and the roads empty out.  The sounds of the usual bustle begin to subside and a calm begins to pervade the squares and streets.  By the time the sun sets over the plain below, it can feel like the whole city has taken a deep breath and let it out slowly.

Last Friday, with the approach of Snowstorm Nemo, New York City could have been Jerusalem.  Sleet was falling in the afternoon and people began leaving, getting to where they would stay for the duration of the storm.  Even in Midtown, where our office is, bit by bit, there were fewer cars, less honking and sirens.  We closed the office a little early.  And by the time the snow began to fall in earnest, later in the evening, as I was on my way to Shabbat dinner, there was a magical hush everywhere.  The streets were mostly empty except for people walking, some with their dogs.  The glow from the strings of left-over holiday lights caught the softly falling snow.  The usually frantic city felt soothed and quiet.

One of the things I love about New York City is the wonderful energy and astonishing abundance of people and buildings and things to do and see and eat and explore. There is usually no stopping it or even any desire to stop it.  But on this Erev Shabbat, it seemed like the city shavat vayinafash – stopped and took a breath.

By Shabbat morning the sun was shining and the sky was blue.  I made my way to Central Park to explore the snowy woods and to watch the kids (of all ages!) playing in the snow.  New York was returning to itself: noisy, colorful, vibrant.  Yet, the magic of the snow stayed all through Shabbat.  It wasn’t until Sunday that there was more gray slush than pristine fields of snow – just in time for a new workaday beginning to the week.

As I walk through New York City these days, particularly in the evening, I am conscious of a desire to hold on to this magical time of year and not to let it pass.  The city is filled with lights and decorations and people in beautiful clothes; the sidewalks are crowded with Christmas trees and holiday shoppers.  It seems like everyone is heading out to a party and the darkness is warm and cozy, not cold and lonely.  Wouldn’t it be great if it were like this all winter long until spring comes?  And come to think of it, why stop just because the days are longer?

One could argue that the story of Chanukah is also about holding on.  The second blessing reminds us of the miracles that were performed on our behalf at this time of year – this very same time of year.  Now it’s just like it was back then!  We want to remember the miracles and the deliverances, to keep the power of memory, to bring back traditions of our real or mythical ancestors – the specific latke technique, the Yiddish or Ladino melodies.

How profound, however, that the candles we use to make known the miracles are small, thin candles that go out in less than an hour!  They are not like Shabbat candles that last through dinner or like yahrzeit candles that burn 24 hours.  In fact, one of my family’s traditions is betting on which candle will go out last and watching intently as the flames flare and gutter and go out, releasing its twisting ribbon of smoke.

We know that everything passes – the candles, the holidays, the winter, life itself.  Even the miracles come and go; the siddur reminds us that new miracles are constantly with us, morning, noon and night.  The ephemeral candles remind us that light is beautiful, even when it’s fleeting – perhaps even because it is fleeting.  They remind us that joy and gratitude in and of themselves are miracles of the spirit.

Wishing you and your loved ones a Chanukah filled with light and all kinds of miracles.

I find it so difficult to get up in the dark morning as we head into winter.  And of course, although going back to standard time gives me a temporary reprieve, soon it will just be a fact of winter:  dark mornings and dark evenings.

Some people experience a depression of spirit in the face of so much darkness.  For me, the most difficult part is the accompanying sleepiness.  I must have a very strong circadian clock in my system!  My instinct is to hibernate; I want to curl up in the blankets and dive back into dreaming.

I have learned a lot about sleepiness from my practice.  I can’t tell you how many times I have felt sleepiness overwhelm me in the midst of meditating or learning or praying.  At first, I would berate myself, but over time, I have learned that sleepiness requires subtle discernment.  Sometimes sleepiness is just a fact.  I am tired right now.  That is part of the human condition.  I can bring a sense of curiosity to it:  What IS this sleepiness?  I notice the heaviness in my body, the fuzziness in my thinking, the dream states as they arise.  My awareness ebbs and flows and I notice that too.

But sometimes the sleepiness is something I can address as a hindrance that can be overcome.  The truth is I don’t want to allow sleepiness to take over my practice.  I have my bag of tricks to help me.  I begin counting, paying careful attention to the beginning and end of each breath.  Or in a word-based practice I seek one word in each line that might hold special meaning or intention.  These things can wake me up.

Ultimately, waking up is the purpose of all this practice.  Sleepiness is not confined to the winter months.  As the shofar blasts from last month’s holidays remind us, it is so easy to lead sleepy lives.   Cultivating curiosity and the ability to remember to wake up can help us shake off the heavy slumber and prepare us to face the darkness – and the light – more wide awake and more alive.

As Psalm 94 so succinctly puts it:  God knows that human plans are futile.  Instead of spending this week learning with Art Green and other teachers on retreat, we came back home to witness the overwhelming destruction swept in by the hurricane.  I and the other Institute staff were very, very lucky; we experienced very little of the direct fury of the storm and a great deal of concern and love from so many people from all over the world.

In the midst of the tremendous losses all around, I am noticing the role of waiting.  Beginning on Shabbat afternoon before the storm, there was a eerie stillness all around.  The air felt heavy, foreboding.  I came back to the city on Sunday and had to stock up on food and emergency supplies since I had not expected to be home.  The line at the grocery store snaked all around the entire building.  The anxiety was palpable, even though it was more than 24 hours before the storm arrived.  The stores closed and we all went home to wait.

And now that the winds and rain have stopped, we are still waiting:  waiting for the trains to start again, waiting for the roads to be cleared and for airports, schools and businesses to reopen.  Some are waiting for electricity and water to be restored and to get back into their damaged homes.  There will be waiting for insurance companies and rebuilding.

And there will be waiting for the terrible pain of grief to subside.  This must be the most difficult waiting of all.

In his book, “Sailing Home,” Norman Fischer writes, “We all know a crisis when we see it. … But after the dust of frenzied activity settles, and we are finally able to feel our way into what we have been through, we realize just how unhinged we have become.  We can’t go back to business as usual, for we sense that we no longer fit into our former life.  We need a new life.  But we don’t know how to find it.  There is nothing else to do right now but stay where we are and wait.”

Sometimes waiting is not simply passivity or wasting time.  Sometimes, even though it is frustrating, painful or anxiety-producing, it just takes time to let the things we have experienced work their way through our souls.  Waiting too can be holy work.

Of course, there are things to do while we are waiting: reaching out to loved ones and neighbors, contributing money and effort towards taking care of those in need and rebuilding, not to mention voting next week and thinking again about climate change.  But those are all human plans.  We have an opportunity to remember that sometimes the deep transformation can begin to emerge not from impulsive action, but rather precisely from the slow, difficult work of waiting.