Wise Aging Through Jewish Mindfulness
February 12 – March 26, 2026
6 Live Zoom Sessions
Thursdays, 4:00-5:15pm ET | Feb 12, 19, 26, March 5, 12, 26
How can Jewish mindfulness help us extract and expand the wisdom of the latter stages of our lives? Based on Wise Aging, the now-classic book by Rabbi Rachel Cowan and Linda Thal, this six-week program will immerse participants in a community of ongoing mindfulness practice, reflection, and connection. Together, we’ll explore how meditation and mindfulness can help us meet physical and emotional challenges, learn to grow in acceptance of ourselves and others, deepen our friendships and familial relationships, live with greater joy, gratitude, and resilience, and shape a legacy for the future.
Learn how Jewish mindfulness practice can help you embrace aging as a spiritual practice, enabling you to access your deepest wisdom.
- Learn tools and practices for exploring – and celebrating – the latter stage of our lives.
- Connect deeply with others on the same trajectory.
- Nurture your capacity to counter the “declinist” view of aging – the ageism that pervades society and which we too often internalize.
- Cultivate equanimity about the aging process.
- Clarify your understanding of your essential, most authentic self.
- Develop your capacity simply to be, rather than to seek meaning only in productivity and accomplishment.
- Identify those aspects of your life and identity which no longer serve you
- Strengthen your ability to release these to the past.
- Celebrate and Share the wisdom which you have developed over a lifetime.
Components of the Course
Week 1: Obstacle Ahead: The Declinist View of Aging
Week 2: Approaching Aging with Curiosity
Week 3: Rediscovering Your Authentic Self
Week 4: Integrating Shabbat Consciousness: Being, Not Doing
Week 5: Releasing That Which We No Longer Need
Week 6: Celebrating our Lives, and Next Steps
Register Now
IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.
Abundance Level
$399
Basic Level
$299
Reduced Level
$199
Meet Your Instructors:
Rabbi Marc Margolius
Rabbi Marc Margolius is a Senior Core Faculty member at IJS and serves as advisor for overall programming for IJS. He directs programming for lay leaders and Hevraya, the alumni of our Clergy Leadership Program. He hosts the “Daily Sit,” IJS’s online daily mindfulness meditation sessions, and teaches several courses, including Awareness in Action: Cultivating Character through Mindfulness and Middot, our online program in tikkun middot practice, integrating Jewish mindfulness with attention to core middot, character traits.
Previously, Marc served as rabbi at West End Synagogue in Manhattan and Congregation Beth Am Israel in Penn Valley, PA, where he pioneered a Shabbat-centered model of congregational engagement.
Karen Frank
Karen Frank has been a congregational nurse to several synagogues in New Jersey and a facilitator for Wise Aging since the early 2000s. Additionally, she, Rabbi Rachel Cowan z”l, and Dr. Linda Thal trained over 600 facilitators for the Wise Aging program nationally. She ardently believes that participating in the program encourages equanimity, mindfulness, and contentment in the aging process. Her work as a pastoral care nurse, Wise Aging facilitator, meditator, and Jewish Spiritual Director meld beautifully to assist people in aging, confronting disease, and coping with the challenges of our time.
Karen holds degrees in psychology, nursing, and certification in Jewish Spiritual Direction. She lives in Denville, NJ, is widowed, and is the mother of four adults.
