New Year of the Trees
by Laura Hegfield (Educators Cohort and JMMTT graduate)Tu Bishvat, the Jewish "New Year of the Trees," is the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat -- which this year begins the evening of Sunday, February 1 and continues throughout the day on Monday, February 2. On or around that date, we invite you to engage in a beautiful tree-based contemplative practice led by Laura Hegfield, a graduate of the IJS Educators cohort and Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training (JMMTT) program. She offers a short, guided embodied meditation based on taking a few moments to study the form of a tree, whether out in nature, or viewed through a window in your home or office. Click here for the audio...
Seder Tu BiShvat: A Seder for the Festival of the Trees
by Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (CLP6) and Rabbi Jeffrey Goldwasser (R2)[T]he 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat, the full moon of the month, is the New Year of the Trees; we pause to mark the passage of time measured in their rings. The Talmud established this as the New Year’s Day for all trees, so that we could observe the commandment “When you enter the land and plant any tree for food...three years it shall be forbidden for you, not to be eaten. In the fourth year all its fruit shall be set aside for jubilation before Adonai; and only in the fifth year may you use its fruit.” (Leviticus 19:23-24.) Jewish tradition uses trees as a symbol for life, learning and the divine. The Jewish...
Rabbi Myriam Klotz Joins IJS Staff as Senior Program Director
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) announced today that Rabbi Myriam Klotz will join the organization’s staff as Senior Program Director effective August 17. Klotz, a major figure in Jewish yoga and embodied practice for decades, has been a faculty member at IJS since 2003. She has taught in the organization’s flagship clergy leadership training programs and recently helped to launch...
IJS Welcomes Maidelle Goodman Benamy as Director of Development
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality announced today that Maidelle Goodman Benamy will become the organization’s Director of Development effective July 22. Benamy joins IJS after an already distinguished 35-year career in philanthropy and Jewish communal work. She has previously served as Vice President of Development at the Educational Alliance, Executive Vice President at the Jewish National...
Awareness in Activism: Jewish Spiritual Practice for Personal Change and Social Justice
During the COVID-19 pandemic and the current uprising for racial justice, I have been teaching an online program for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) in mindfulness and character development, “Awareness in Action: Cultivating Character through Mindfulness and Middot.” Through this program, participants have applied tikkun middot practice -- mindfully cultivating innate...
IJS Welcomes Michal Fox Smart as Chief Program Officer
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality announced today that Michal Fox Smart will become the organization’s first Chief Program Officer effective July 1. She will serve as the leader of the program team, overseeing the Institute’s faculty and program staff and coordinating the work of its rich roster of instructors, and will be responsible for developing and delivering all of IJS’s programmatic...
IJS Executive Director Josh Feigelson’s Conversation with Author Sarah Hurwitz
From 2009 to 2017, Sarah Hurwitz served as a White House speechwriter, first as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama and then as head speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama. Prior to serving in the Obama Administration, Sarah was chief speechwriter for Hillary Clinton on her 2008 presidential campaign. Sarah is the author of Here All Along: Finding Meaning,...
Mindfulness Practice: An Ark in the Storm
In Genesis, God instructs Noah to build an ark to protect his family and two of each species on earth from the floodwaters that God will bring. “Make yourself an ark of gopher wood: make it an ark with compartments and cover it inside and out with pitch” (Genesis 6:14). The implication is clear: if the ark is to be a true refuge from the coming floods, Noah must pay close attention...
What’s Jewish about mindfulness?
An IJS-informed approach shows how mindfulness and Jewish wisdom strengthen connection, purpose, and leadership.
Living and Leading with Courage, Resilience, and Sacred Purpose
Dear friends and colleagues,When I started in my position just a month and a half ago, the world was a different place. My big ambition for my first year was to lead us through a strategic planning and business modeling process that would result in a rearticulated vision, mission, and strategy with a multi-year business plan. My assumption was that we would secure new funding for...
Intentional Communities
The phrase "community of practice" is one of those bandied-about terms that seems particularly suited to Jewish spiritual groups: Community and practice - how obvious and how obviously beneficial! And yet, it's also not so simple. Just because you happen to share a profession, a craft or a practice with a group of other people doesn't mean that the group will in fact be supportive or a good...
Rage and Love: Reaching Out
Last week we offered a meditation retreat for activists from across the country, thanks to a grant from the Nathan Cummings Foundation in memory of Rabbi Rachel Cowan. At the end of a few days of cultivating a loving heart through meditation, prayer and silence, the participants shared their thoughts and experiences of connecting contemplative practice with their work as activists. Several of...
Hey Big Talkers: Shhh
We Jews are known for being big talkers. We are stereotypically a people of a lot of words, of arguments, of big ideas, of strong opinions. I remember once speaking to a Catholic boys’ school in Missouri. The first kid raised his hand and said, to his teacher’s mortification, “Our science teacher is Jewish and she talks fast, too. Do all Jews talk fast?” (I quickly said, “Yes!”) It’s not...
Facing Our Vulnerability
In our people’s mythic calendar, this is the time of year that we are journeying from the Red Sea to Sinai, from Passover to Shavuot. For me the annual pilgrimage started, as it does most years, when I made the journey to my parents’ home for Passover. And as usual, each time I boarded the plane, coming and going, I whispered the traveler’s prayer to myself. I love tefillat haderekh, the...
A Year of Learning
Last week we celebrated a special anniversary: it has been one year since my husband and I became foster parents to a wonderful 18-year-old refugee from West Africa. It has been a year of great blessing and joy and also of tremendous learning, as you can imagine, given that this is our first time parenting and we jumped right into teenagerhood – not to mention all kinds of cultural differences....
Institute for Jewish Spirituality and Nathan Cummings Foundation Announce New Scholarship Fund to Honor the Legacy of Rabbi Rachel Cowan
The Rachel Cowan Scholarship Fund will provide greater access for activists and traditionally marginalized Jews to IJS's contemplative retreats and programs. The Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) has created the Rachel Cowan Scholarship Fund to celebrate the legacy of Rabbi Rachel Cowan, who passed away last year. The fund will focus on bringing more activists and underrepresented...
Where It All Begins
This month begins IJS’s 20th anniversary year! I was not personally present at the very beginning in 1999 when Rachel Cowan (z”l) and Nancy Flam brought together an extraordinary group of spiritual teachers and seekers in a process of sharing and learning that became the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. So much has changed and evolved since then. But one thing that has not changed has been the...
Sweetening the Root
The end of the year is often a time for looking back, a kind of collective secular cheshbon hanefesh: an accounting of what has transpired over the year. In addition to the list of top movies and songs, we can take a sober look at what were the big news stories, who passed from this world, where we are as a community, as a culture, as a planet, compared to a year ago. It is easy to feel...
Loved, Clear, Courageous
Hanukkah is upon us and with it the aptness of all the metaphors of bringing light into the darkness. A less examined theme of the holiday, however, at least in many spiritual circles, is holy boldness - the decisive action that the Macabees took in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds that enabled them to defeat the wicked government that vastly outweighed them. We tend to shy away from...
Threefold Path of Action
Even before the horrific massacre at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh this past Shabbat, it was easy to feel overwhelmed by the state of the world. The forces at play are so huge and the stakes are so high. How do we muster the courage to act? How do we even discern what actions to take? Following the teaching of Joanna Macy, we might consider three different paths: holding and taking care...