The Book and the Sword (Huqat 5786)
The other night I had dinner with a dear old friend and colleague. After catching up about our families and personal lives, the conversation moved, inevitably, to the state of the Jewish people. My friend, an astute observer of history, offered that our generation experienced a unique set of circumstances in the life of the Jews: We were born in America the wake of World War II. Having vanquished Germany and Japan, the United States made them and much of the rest of the world into markets and trading partners, leading to an unprecedently long economic boom. And, in the shadow of the Shoah, antisemitism was banished from polite society. American Jews flooded into universities and rapidly...
Kissing Contest (Korach 5786)
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was from a high school girlfriend. Like many hormone-filled teenagers (which is to say, teenagers), I was trying to figure out in my mind how she and I might eventually kiss. And, like many teenagers, I was having an awkward go of it. I had probably learned too many unrealistic lessons from watching fake romance in the movies. I was waiting for the dramatic scene where we would look at each other, the camera would zoom in and, as we inched closer, the magic would happen as the music swelled in the background. Needless to say, that’s not generally how it works in real life. Luckily for me, this young woman a) felt similarly about kissing, but...
Musings of an Amateur Gardener
By Rabbi Nathan Martin Over the last few years I have turned my attention to growing summer vegetables. This project often starts in April with my attempts to cultivate early sprouts in the seed trays in our dining room (with dirt spills and all), and continues until the cool November frosts lay to bed the last of my tomato plants. I take great pleasure in announcing, with fanfare, the elements...
Practice Off the Mat
Last month I was called for jury duty and I was surprised how much the experience of sitting for three days in the jury room was similar to being on a silent retreat. Don’t get me wrong: It was not because the jury room was a still container that facilitated deep truth telling and inner exploration. Rather, in the enforced quiet of the jury room, I had a fresh opportunity to notice the...
A Complex Position
One morning in early January I left my Upper West Side apartment to go to work. The thermometer read 4 degrees Fahrenheit. I was all bundled up; I finally figured out how to keep my scarf over my nose and mouth without having to hold it there with a mittened hand. But I hadn’t calculated on the wind. When I emerged from the subway in Midtown and walked head-on into the gusting wind, my eye...
Waxing and Waning
There is something about waning that draws the attention to change in ways that waxing does not. It is in the evening liturgy, not the morning prayers, that we remind ourselves about the ordered orbits of the constellations and the way that light rolls away from darkness and darkness from light. When the day is new and light is abundant, we prefer to speak about renewal. But in the gathering...
Transitions – Haibun
By Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg This transition in my life from full time to part time work and toward retirement and old age is reflected in the season. It is a dappled time. It is a golden time. Golden sunshine Bright golden leaves Nearly blinding I move toward acceptance and wisdom, deeply wanting to give myself away, but in a different way. I want to enjoy life, feel nurtured, and truly...
Yom Iyyun: Engaging in Prayer as Practice
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To Become a Living Shofar
So much of our spiritual life is about remembering to remember, trying to really wake up and live our precious lives. It is so easy to be lulled into sleepiness: the sleepiness of busyness, of mindless technology, of the closed heart and the superficial. We know those things are hevel, meaningless, but we keep falling asleep anyway. Nachman points out that “hevel” also means “quickly...
Avodah Meditation
Larry Yermack 5773 I am privileged to lead two meditations during the High Holidays this year at my synagogue. One will be during the Shofarot section of Mussaf on Rosh Hashanah and the other during the Avodah Service on Yom Kippur. This is largely a result of my participation in Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training II, and the good work of my teachers Jeff Roth and Sheila Weinberg in...
If Not Now, When?
Elul 5773 Rabbi Jonathan Slater A profound shift in human consciousness took place when someone imagined that God spoke and the world came into being. Previously the cycles of nature were the basis on which people conceived of time: fixed in a pattern of birth and death, decay and renewal where nothing truly new or innovative could take place. Now, time stretched in a linear fashion from a point...
Repeating Patterns
I recently learned the Yiddish phrase: “Iz geht schon auf Elul.” It’s just about Elul. Even though the sun feels like the height of summer, the soul’s season is moving steadily towards teshuvah, towards turning back to the way we know things ought to be. One of the advantages of the holidays beginning so unusually early is that we have different metaphors from the natural world to inspire...
Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program: Cohort 3
"The JMTT program created a context for me to access and expand my knowledge of Jewish text and traditions from a perspective of mindfulness. This perspective brought Torah into my daily life on an on-going basis. The JMTT program created a context for me to begin to read and understand Torah from a Mindfulness perspective." "The combination of Jewish and Buddhist texts were excellent. I was...
Embodied Practice: Full Moon at its Fullest
Myriam Klotz 6/20/2013 Just as the moon has cycles of growing fuller and then empty, so too our bodies move through cycles of filling and emptying. This Saturday and Sunday (June 22-23), the moon is at its fullest, and closer to the earth, than it will be at any other time of the year. Some commentators use the Hebrew word keseh to refer to the full moon. Keseh echoes the word kos, which means...
Summertime Travels
Summertime – the great annual habit-breaker. If we are lucky, we have the opportunity to look up from our usual routine and try something new. Often that newness involves travel. And it’s curious: some of us sit still to try to reconnect with clarity and insight. But there are some insights that are easier to come to through motion. It’s like when we stand in front of a wooden fence. When...
Templeton Foundation Grant: Mindfulness & Tikkun Middot Project for Jewish Organizations
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...
Repair the World
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...
May My Prayer Come to You
When I was in rabbinical school, our mentors would tell us that we each had one sermon to give, and that we would have to figure out how to give that sermon in various ways throughout our lives. At the time, I found the instruction comforting, for I understood it to mean that our essential work was to be true to our own souls and our unique insight, and labor creatively to share that teaching...
[How] Do Jews Pray?
If you were to ask the Jewish person in the street if Jews prayed, you would likely be told that we do. If pressed further about what Jews do, you would likely be told that Jews recite the words of the siddur, or that they say blessings. 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...
Exciting Announcement for Rabbis and Cantors
One of the things I greatly value about the Institute for Jewish Spirituality is that we are a learning organization. We are constantly exploring how we can more skillfully nurture mindful leaders who can work with us to revitalize Jewish life. One way we do that is by evaluating our programs to investigate their effectiveness and challenge their assumptions. As a result of this analysis, we are...