Beyond Burnout: What Clergy Need to Lead and Last
On Tuesday, May 14, Rabbis Benjamin Ross, Josh Feigelson, Jenny Solomon, and Cantor Julia Cadrain, held a candid and timely conversation about the burnout crisis. Josh and Benjamin's recent joint report, Holy Work, Human Limits, Communal Potential, captures the gravity of this issue, and together they shared the findings and open a dialogue about where we go from here.
The Concept of “Ani” and the Separating Partition
Session Opening and Thematic Context Rabbi Nancy Flam: Let’s just rest in ourselves for a minute or two. Allow everything else to just be what it is. And just just I invite you to rest in yourself. Sitting for a minute or two. So, we're in a progression in our meditation instructions and practice over this retreat preparing ourselves to experience what revelation might be. So in a way the instructions and the teaching will be pointing us to more and more subtle aspects of mind and being such that we might make ourselves transparent to revelation. That's the preparation. So, I'd like to start this morning with a teaching. It’s actually written out on the sheets. I think they're below your...
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...
Rachel’s Legacy of Connection
It is hard to believe that we are almost at the shloshim, the 30-day initial mourning period, for Rachel Cowan, who peacefully left this world at the end of August. For me, it has been a month of deep sadness and a sense of confusion: even though we all knew this day would come, how can it be that Rachel is no longer among us with her warm laugh, her compassionate ear, her wise teachings?...
Re-Committing to Intention
In just two short weeks, the High Holy Days will be upon us: a new year, a new beginning, a new opportunity to live our lives a little more in alignment. At first glance it may seem a little odd that Rosh Hashanah is also known as Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembrance. If we are setting our sights forward and reconnecting to the possibility that in every moment we are recreated as a new...
Finding Curiosity
Sometimes hitlamdut, cultivating a lens of openness and curiosity, is simple and inspiring. It is reawakening a childlike wonder that brings joy and gratitude and a sense of belonging to this life. That is not my experience these days. These days I am keenly aware of the voice inside that says, “We’ve seen this before and we know how it is going to unfold.” This voice looks back at history, at...
Wisdom from Our Teachers
I am coming up on the conclusion of seven years as the director of IJS – a full cycle, like the fullness of creation or the cycle of the fields. I am so proud of the work of IJS and how we have grown, offering spiritual seekers opportunities to deepen their practice, and reaching out to connect with new people who may not have even thought of themselves as spiritual seekers. I have learned so...
First Comes Effort, then Comes a Gift
Several years ago, the New Yorker featured a cover that showed a woman sitting in the lotus position, ostensibly meditating. You can tell she is so wound up that she is about to jump out of her skin. If you look carefully in the direction of her baleful glare, there is a little fly, innocently tooling around. One of the reasons I find this image so funny is that I have been there myself so many...
Act Kindly (Demand Justice)
The first time I led a seder was my sophomore year in college. There were nine of us in Perkins Hall, three Jews and six Catholics. I was so proud of my charoset and matzah balls. I borrowed haggadot from Hillel and confidently led us through the readings. But when we started the part after the meal, I stopped in confusion. "Pour out Your wrath on the nations that do not know You...for they have...
Teach Me Your Way
Part of my daily practice includes a fragment of a teaching from the Piaseczner Rebbe, Kalonymus Kalman Shapira. He instructed his students to work with Psalm 86:11: "Teach me, YHVH, your way that I may walk in your truth. Unify my heart to revere your name." He taught a particular melody for the verse which I learned from Rabbi Nehemia Polen. I chant it to myself at the end of my meditation and...