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.
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 seats. Thank you, Rachel and Maidelle and Shai for putting them out there. And it’s about this word Anochi. Surprise, surprise.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: So, first I’ll read the text from Deuteronomy. This is right before Moses repeats the revelation, the content of the Ten Commandments. And Moses is saying to the people:
Face to face. God spoke to you on the mountain out of the fire. I stood between you and God at that time to convey God’s words to you. For you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain, saying, “I the eternal am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.”
And that last line of course starts Anochi. So that’s what God first spoke. And he people were afraid as we recall from the Zornberg—could be annihilating. What can we bear? We can’t bear it. The people said, “You do it for us. You stand between us and God. We won’t be able to bear it. We won’t be able to maintain our identity, as the Zornberg taught.” Fair enough.
And now we have this teaching from the Ma’or Va-shemesh, another third generation teacher, Hasidic great on the parasha of Be’haalotcha. And he wrote:
I heard from the holy Rav, our teacher Yechiel Mikhel, the preacher from the holy congregation of Zlatchov, a drash on the verse, “I stand before you and God,” which is of course what Moses said. And he teaches that in his name— the Ma’or Va-shrmesh is teaching—if a person makes themself out to be important or clever—a somebody—that only creates a separating partition that is the work of an “I.”
Meaning that if out of pride one says I’m a somebody with good qualities, that will stand between you and God—that will stand between you and God. Through such doing, you erect a separating partition. You need to know that you are like nothing at all. Only what the Holy One of blessing gives to you by way of your life force to accomplish something great or small. For God makes everything be. Therefore, it is not fitting for any person to say “I”. Rather, it is only fitting for God to say “I”.
Try that on for size—right? It’s a profound teaching and for those of you who have been students of meditation for some time you know that the whole question of I, me, and mine—relating everything back to me—can be problematic, imprisoning, obscuring in terms of what’s really real. What’s really real?
Rabbi Nancy Flam: So, I’m going to read you a couple pieces from Danny Matt which I read at this very time last year and which we talked about afterwards on the Zoom call. Um, but you liked it so much I wanted to bring it back. So, these are the pieces, and not all of you were here last year, of course. Danny Matt writes in my all-time favorite essay, if you have not read it or not read it recently, as in the last month, go read it again. It’s called “Beyond the Personal God,” and it’s in the 1994 spring edition of the Reconstructionist Journal. You can find it online for free or email me, and I’ll send it to you.
In that essay, he talks about how the idea of a personal god and the idea of a separate personhood that we are sort of arise together and are mutually reinforcing. But there’s another way to construct reality and divinity which is without separation. The aleph—ein od milvado—as Jon taught us—that’s it. It’s just all divinity, no separation. And that’s what can be an overwhelming experience. And the people said, “No, no, no, no, no. We’d like to—we’d like to—we don’t want to die and we don’t want to lose our separate existence.” Understandable. We might, no pun intended, identify with that perspective.
So what meditation practice can do is train us toward more and more transparency to the point that we can bear. It’s not an all or nothing proposition. It’s not like come up to the mountain and be there or don’t. Our meditation training helps us to efface that sense of I, the attachment, the identification—to where we experience more of the teeming vitality that is life of which we are a part. That is a central project of Hasidut—bittul ha-yesh—effacement of self. Effacement. And what’s so cool is that our meditation practice in this way can be a training toward that for as much as we can bear. Each according to her strength. Okay. Danny Matt:
Over our lifetime in collaboration with our family and friends, we’ve woven a story about ourselves—a story that defines who we are. The ego cannot be understood or expressed except in relation to an audience. And this audience’s responses, real or imagined, continually shape the way in which we define ourselves, the story we tell. We do not consciously and deliberately figure out what narratives to tell and how to tell them. For the most part, we don’t spin our tales, they spin us. These streams of narrative issue forth as if—if from a single source—to those around us, it seems that a unified agent has authored the story—that there’s a center of narrative gravity. This apparent center, this apparent self is an enormously helpful simplification, but it’s an abstraction, not a thing in the brain. Though fictional, it is remarkably robust and almost tangible.
And later he writes—actually it’s earlier in the essay he writes:
“I’m looking out the window at a tree. My eye follows a branch and focuses on a leaf.” Leaf. The name is mentally satisfying. I found the appropriate label. I know what I’m seeing. But the appropriateness of the name lulls me into thinking that there’s really a separate object there called leaf. As if the leaf were not part of a continuum. Blade, veins, stem, stipule, twig, branch, limb, bough, trunk, root. So, the name leaf is misleading. Maybe I should just stick with tree. But is there really a separate self-contained thing I can call by that name? Down below, the roots absorb water and minerals from the soil. Up above, the chlorophyll in the leaves traps and stores the energy of sunlight. The leaf is not separate from the tree. The tree is not separate from the earth and the atmosphere. Nothing is entirely separate from anything else.
Nothing is entirely separate from anything else. We need names to navigate through life, but those very names obscure the flowing continuum. Behind each handy name is a teeming reality that resists our neat definitions. Don’t we want to get close to that? Don’t we want to know that—don’t we want to experience the living beings that we are like that? We do. We do. And our meditation practice is a training toward that loosening of this attachment, this identification with the fiction, the word I. Only God, the Ma’or Va’shemesh says in the name of the Zlatchover, only God should say I.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: So for our practice, I told you we’d be building on the mental noting. It’s good news or bad news. But it’s—it’s simple. So what I’m going to suggest today is for a mental noting if you so wish is that the way we label—note the experience—is “something’s arising.” It’s arising in the field of consciousness. So—”thought arising,” “sensation arising,” “emotion arising,” whatever we notice, we get even the word I out of the way like “I’m angry.” Oh no, it’s really actually very cool. It’s actually a hot experience, but “anger arising,” you know, rather than “I’m angry”—that kind of locks things in there. Have you noticed?
But if we can open our arms to be that field of consciousness co-terminus with all sensations. And we say “anger arising,” “constriction arising,” “thought arising,” like the whole crazy concatenation of what it is. Often when—say “anger arises,” but keep the “I” out of it because only God should say I. Let’s just experiment with what happens with that. Does it allow us to relax more? Does it allow us to just open the limbs of our being so that the energy can come through as this color or that flavor without making it mine, without identifying with it. I mean, it’s fairly ridiculous what goes through a human mind. It’s—it’s—have you noticed it’s ridiculous, right? It’s like—and we think everything’s so important. And it’s not that our lives, our discernments, our decisions are not important, but each moment if we can get a little bit of release, it’s—it’s experience arising, you know, it might bring a smile to your face. It’s like, yeah, it’s like they say, get over yourself, you know, it’s like—it’s so freeing.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Anyway, that’s my testimony today. You got it. Um, so we’re going to practice that way. And, um, does anyone have a question about that? About the practice where we might name drop in? And you can keep it general or you can get more granular in the kind of particular flavor of the thought. You can say you know “remembering arising” or “judgment arising” but it’s just arising. Does anyone have a question about the practice I’m suggesting? Yes.
Participant: Do you place a higher value on saying emotion arising than naming the specific emotion?
Rabbi Nancy Flam: No, it doesn’t matter. No, in fact, you know, whatever is going to keep your mind relaxed, at ease, awake, just to notice something’s arising. If it helps you to be more precise because that makes you more awake to your experience, go for it. More general can sometimes just be more easeful. Experiment with it. Anything else?
Okay. So, we’re going to practice. But first, this is a bit belated. I’m going to remind you about posture. I know. Why didn’t I do this on the first day? Oh, you know, whatever. Okay. So, the main thing, the most important thing is that we want this balance of alert and relaxed, which is not what we usually practice—either we are alert and tight or we’re relaxed and somnolent. So actually we want to cultivate a sense of relaxation and alertness.
So you want to feel your sitsbones. It’s helpful to have your feet on the floor. It is helpful to have your hips higher than your knees. So if you need to sit up on a pillow for that—um—like—like Josh is, you can Carol Merrill over there. Yeah, Josh is modeling how you might sit so your hips are above your knees. That allows you to stay erect without using all your muscles to do so. You want to not lean back on the back of the chair. You actually—you can even—um—do an external rotation on your thighs so you can really feel your sitsbones really planted there. You’ve got a good tripod of a—of a base.
Hands can rest on your thighs. Up or down, it doesn’t matter. Shoulders down and back. You might roll them once or twice. Imagine the head resting on top of the spine like a balloon, like a helium balloon. Right in line. Chin—chin slightly tucked in toward the notch of the neck. Just very slightly. Jaw relaxed. And can open and close the jaw a couple times at the beginning of a sit. Eyes can be open or closed. And you might just do a little scan to invite relaxation where it’s possible. We’ll sit together. Rest with your anchor. From time to time, drop in a mental note. Sensation arising. A thought arising. And come back to your anchor. Notice when a sense of I comes in. Invite yourself to release that and go back to noticing something arising. The thing—if you’ve gotten lost, come back. Rest with your anchor.
[Period of silence]
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Wondering if a few people would like to share observations or questions about working with this practice. And would you—would you speak up, Louis?
Louis: I’ll speak up so I can hear myself. Um, what—what does it mean? I know—I know in the beginnings of my meditation I know what it meant when I would fall asleep or my mind would really wander off base. What does it mean when in this meditation I did not—not definitively interact with the presentation as part of my process. Instead, I was just very tranquil and transparent. I’m wondering if I can catch myself an enormous break and say, “Oh, then you were absorbing it subliminally” or if I can—or if I hold myself accountable and say, “Nice try, Louis.”
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Oh, Louis, you’re so good. Um, I mean that. I mean that. Um, I mean that. Um, it’s beautiful what you’re sharing, which is that you just experienced a sense of tranquility and transparency and you didn’t choose to—um—um—effort to do this practice. It sounded like—um—something of it came in and you meditated. So, bravo. That’s fantastic. And I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t go another layer out of like what does it mean? Or you know, are you able? You just don’t want to, you know. No, no, it’s not that. It’s not that. It’s—um—um—my—my gut sense is that—um—you engaged in meditation. So that’s beautiful. And not only that—there was a sense it sounds like of—of ease, of openness, of transparency, of alertness. Um so that’s great. Thank you. Thank you. That’s great. That’s great. Ken yirbu. So, may that increase. Yeah. Beautiful. Um, Marte?
Marte: So I have never cared for mental note.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Okay.
Marte: And I’ve always felt like the words got in the way.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Yeah.
Marte: Um, but for some reason today, the way you explained it, or maybe it’s because we did a second day, this really appealed to me as an experiment and I was able to engage and realize that particularly on retreat I get to a place of spaciousness, openness, comfort and peace and it kind of is a space. So then I’m thinking is this a sensation or is this an emotion or this is a thought and then I said no this is my anchor. This place is my anchor which brought me back to last night David’s point about God revelation that God and revelation is always there. The issue is when I am prepared and I can reach him. So I am like so jazzed.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: All right. All right. We—okay. We are accepting not so pleasant experiences as well to share. So just so you know—that is beautiful. I love it. I’m happy. Um thank you for sharing that. Yes.
Unnamed Participant: I’m going to accommodate less pleasant.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Okay, less pleasant is coming.
Unnamed Participant: So, um I found it relatively easy to just say arising whatever was arising. That seemed to make me more relaxed, less of critical thing and then I got sleep.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Okay.
Unnamed Participant: So now kind of lost my alertness in my—in this whole process and then I would struggle to be more alert, sit up, whatever. I’m not going to go back. But it was a kind of—
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. Um yeah, I just had a couple thoughts. I want to see if I can catch them. Right. This practice—um—my experience is with this kind of mental noting that more relaxation comes to the body. It was beautiful noticing you notice that—and then as I said before, our default is relaxed somnolent.
Unnamed Participant: Right.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Right. Alert, tight. And so what you noticed is that with relax came somnolent. That’s fine. And you could continue the practice. I mean, we’re just noticing how this whole system works so that we can operate it with more grace and wisdom. Um you can continue the practice which is—um—”sleepiness arising.” “Fuzziness arising.” If it’s unpleasant to you because you’re starting to struggle, “unpleasant arising,” you can just keep the practice with whatever is happening. You see what I’m saying?
Unnamed Participant: I do. I felt the urge to—um—”sleepiness arising.” I don’t want to be sleepy.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Yeah.
Unnamed Participant: I need to sit up more alert. I need to—
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Yeah. Yeah. “I need to”—that came out. And that’s okay, too. We always have choice with sleepiness or any hindrance. So sleepiness is one of the five hindrances. We always have a choice which is to—uh—be mindful of the hindrance that’s arising or apply some kind of antidote. And so with sleepy one of the antidotes is open the eyes or stand up. Is it harder to fall asleep when we’re standing up? Um hopefully. So we can do one of two things when we notice what we might label a hindrance to our balanced alert and relaxation. We can either mindfully notice and be with kindness and clarity or we can apply one or another antidote. So, it’s—it’s just interesting to know it’s an art. Meditation is truly an art. There’s science to it, but there’s also art to it. And we become better artists as we—as we practice. Yeah. I can’t even see because of the sun who’s in the back? It’s Keith…
Peter: Peter.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Peter.
Peter: Um I—uh—I noticed things arising. I forgot—this is very helpful just now. I forgot to—to say it was arising. So I was like, “Oh, I do a lot of planning. I do a lot of like—I’m sort of noticing where my head is going.” Uh and at the—at the very end my legs started to hurt and I’m kind of looking at the clock and then I said, “Okay, I’m gonna stretch” and then like a minute later you ring the bell. I’m like, “f***, I could really bing [sic] up.” Um, so—so—um—
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Good noticing.
Peter: Um, but what I’m curious about is like I’ve always had this sense of like you just, you know, in meditation you are with what is, right? Like you—you—you—know just be with what is—like that hurts then it hurts whatever—you’re not—you’re not changing anything—but I’m curious about what you just said around the distinction between that and hindrances and doing something to change the—I lost a little bit in that.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Sure sure question—yeah—so as I said—um—noticing something that feels like a hindrance to—to our mindfulness to our balanced mindfulness—balanced mind—we can be with that so—or we can apply an antidote. So with pain this is where sort of art and discernment comes you know—um—pain if it’s not too extreme and doesn’t overwhelm our mindfulness can be very interesting support for mindfulness for meditation right we go—um—you know “tightness arising,” “constriction arising,” “heat arising,” “aversion arising.” So that’s another thing we can notice—desire, aversion or spacing out. It’s technically called delusion arising. So we can notice the aversion which is kind of a second level—um—noticing.
Um and then if it’s becoming like we’re agitated, we are becoming unbalanced, we don’t have enough mindfulness to meet the moment which is always a discernment. Do I have enough mindfulness to meet the moment or not? Because sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. So then wisdom can say I’m going to stand up. No need for—like—it wasn’t a failure. It wasn’t a failure. That could have been wisdom saying you know though it was subconscious there’s not enough mindfulness here for me to meet the moment—moment as it’s presenting itself. I have another choice. I’m going to mindfully stand up, stretch, feel the release. Oh, pleasant. Oh, you know, deep breath and sit down again. So, it—it in my—um—in my way of practicing and how I’ve been taught, it’s not one right answer. It’s not like just sit there till your mind becomes so tight like a corkscrew that like—what’s the point of that you know that doesn’t increase mindfulness. We’re trying to increase mindfulness. Does that help?
Peter: Yeah. Yeah, it does. I where I get caught up a little bit is—is—if fix my logic here. If the—if the—if the goal ultimately is to be able to sit with what is—I can’t—stand getting in the way of my mindfulness. So, I’m going to stand up. Now, I’m revealing my psychology. How is that not failure?
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Oh, because—um—because you do it mindfully. You are make wisdom. So wisdom has to come in. Wisdom has to come in. Wisdom has to come in to say what’s the wise choice here—to continue to breathe. Make space for the pain. Investigate it. Allow it. You know, usually it will subside at some point. Um—um—but if there’s not enough mindfulness to meet the moment, there’s not enough mindfulness on board. We haven’t sat for two weeks straight. Maybe after two weeks there’d be enough, you know, it’s all conditions. So conditions are—wisdom says, you know, evaluating the conditions that are actually on board, right? And making a wise decision. So, um, yeah, thank you for that. I think, you know what I think we’ll do? I’m seeing so many—so many—No, no, we’re going to go to Rex. And then I’m thinking about tomorrow afternoon. I think we’re going to do more question and answer because I think that will be more valuable than anything—um—I might have prepared next year. Okay, Rex.
Rex: Um so building on David’s experience, um Wednesday night I did not sleep well and yesterday morning I think I fell asleep at least eight times the sit. Um, and today there was none of that. Not a good night sleep. Um, and I noticed—um—after a little bit of time—uh—that imagining—there was a lot of imagining happening and I noticed “imagining arising”—coming back—um—and then a—an itching sensation arose near my eye and—um—thought arose. Thought was, “Oh, itching is—half itching is rising—and sun is shining on that plate of grass over there and it’s all the same”—and then there was delight—and then I—and so the light—but the light and back to breath—so—and there was a moment I—I—there was a moment ego actually stepping like, “Oh, triumph! I became one with everything.”
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Yeah—yeah—with everything. All right. So, we have self-condemnation. We have self-congratulation.
Rex: Okay. Yeah. So, just—just sharing that I’m finding the name helpful because it does—it actually—even the emotion. Yeah. It’s really gentle and loving and okay, come back to the breath.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: Fantastic. That’s beautiful. Um yeah, I mean it connects back to in what I said at the top which is like you know the mind is fairly ridiculous when you watch it and—um—I mean we can say that with love but it’s a wild place the mind right it’s pretty wild it’s like—itch—don’t like it—sun—delight—planning—like holy Toledo you know it’s not easy to navigate. And hopefully our practice helps us navigate the mind, the heart, the body and ultimately in this Jewish context brings us as well to a sense of the ani, the ein od milvado, the fiction of the eye. Because that ultimately leads to greater availability for others and greater delight in being part of the mystery which Jonathan spoke of in Heschel’s words this morning.
Rabbi Nancy Flam: I’d like to close with—um—two pieces—um—to bring us back to the theme of the teaching today that there may be moments of revelation where we have become more transparent, less filled with the I-identification and therefore more clear as a conduit for divinity. So here’s a piece—um—that I also read last year, but everyone liked it, so I’m going to read it again. Well, it might or might not be here. Yep. Yeah. This piece by Thich Nhat Hanh. So, here’s a poem. He’s a poet.
Looking into a flower, you can see that the flower is made of many elements that we can call non-flower elements. When you touch the flower, you touch the cloud. You cannot remove the cloud from the flower because if you could remove the cloud from the flower, the flower would collapse right away. You don’t have to be a poet in order to see a cloud floating in the flower. But you know very well that without the clouds, there would be no rain and no water for the flower to grow. So cloud is part of flower. And if you send the element cloud back to the sky there will be no flower. Cloud is a non-flower element and the sunshine—you can touch the sunshine here. If you send back the element sunshine the flower will vanish and sunshine is another non-flower element. And earth and gardener—if you continue you will see a multitude of non-flower elements in the flower. In fact a flower is made only with non-flower elements. It does not have a separate self. A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower has to inter-be with everything else that is called non-flower. That’s what we call interbeing. You cannot be. You can only inter-be. The word interbe can reveal more of the reality that the word—than the word to be. You cannot be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with everything else. So the true nature of the flower is the nature of interbeing. The nature of no self. The flower is there. Beautiful, fragrant. Yes. But the flower is empty of a separate self. To be empty is not a negative note. Because of emptiness, everything becomes possible. So a flower is described as empty. But I like to say it different. A flower is empty only of a separate self. But a flower is full of everything else. The whole cosmos can be seen, can be identified and touched in one flower. So to say that the flower is empty of a separate self also means that the flower is full of the cosmos. It’s the same thing. You are of the same nature as a flower. You are empty of a separate self, but you are full of the cosmos. You are as wonderful as the cosmos. You are a manifestation of the cosmos.
And then—um—I chose this one for—for Nancy Krakar, but I don’t know if she’s here because I don’t see her. Nancy, are you here? Okay, you probably know what—Nancy, for those of you who don’t know, is—is—an Emily Dickinson scholar and fanatic. I say that with love. Um and I have no—another poem. I’m sorry. Sorry, I’m going to make you wait because it’s so good and it looks like it might be in my folder. Today’s Friday morning. This is Friday morning folder. Okay. Oh, here it is.
I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us. Don’t tell! They’d advertise—you know!
How dreary—to be—somebody! How public—like a frog— To tell your name—the livelong June— To an admiring bog!
I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody, too? Then there’s a pair of us. Don’t tell. They’d advertise. You know how dreary to be somebody. How public like a frog to tell your name the livelong June to an admiring bog.
In this video teaching, we begin by contrasting the earth-shaking revelation at Sinai in Exodus 19 and 20 with the subtle, silent murmur of I Kings 19. This distinction serves as a map for our meditation, guiding us past the noise of the ego toward a sanctuary of inner quietude. Here, we connect with the source of divine wisdom to receive a fresh transmission of inner Torah—revealing that the voice of the Divine is still speaking to us, here and now.
This video originally appeared as part of a week-long IJS Daily Sit series in 2021, titled: Standing (or Sitting!) at Sinai, Here and Now: A Week-Long Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Intensive. Click here to access the entire series.
A Note on Language and Inclusion
I created the content before I began my personal journey of growing in awareness about my own disability and my unconscious use of ableist language. I apologize for using metaphors that assume specific physical or sensory abilities. As you engage with this teaching and practice, I invite you to adapt my language to your own experience—perhaps replacing words like “see” or “hear” with “notice,” “observe,” “perceive,” or “tune in.”
May this teaching support all of us to tune into the Torah we need right now – for our own benefit and the benefit of all beings,
Sam.
We are heading into the seventh and final week of the Omer period, associated with the sephirah (Divine emanation) of Malkut (Sovereignty), which in Jewish mystical tradition is connected with holy speech. The focus of our practice this week is sh’mirat hadibbur, mindful speech. How might we channel all the middot, the sacred traits we have cultivated over the Omer period, so they inform how we interface with the world through speech and action? How can we transform our communications into divrei kodesh, holy words?
As an example of how we might use Jewish mindfulness tools to nurture our innate capacity to communicate wisely and from the sacred traits within us, consider the following situation with which many of us are familiar: speaking up to an authority figure on behalf of others who may not be in a position to do so for themselves. (This example is drawn from the module about Shmirat haDibbur, mindful speech, in the IJS Awareness in Action program.)
Imagine you need to speak to a doctor on behalf of a loved one. You’re feeling concerned about their condition and their care, and have questions about their treatment. The doctor is busy and has been hard to reach. You’ve left a number of messages and the office keeps insisting you’ll hear back soon. Finally, your phone rings: the doctor is calling you back.
You only have a few precious minutes. A lot is riding on how it goes. Your intention is to express all your concerns and raise all your questions. You want to communicate with respect, but also be treated with respect. You want to honor the doctor’s expertise, but not be intimidated by the doctor’s authority. You want to communicate warmly, but not be submissive.
Step one is to cultivate hitlamdut, kind, nonjudgmental attention to what is happening in this moment. Notice what’s happening within you and, as judgments arise, let those pass. Scan your body, and just observe: maybe your chest is constricted, your breath shallow, your heart speeding. Your mind may be racing with fear-based thoughts.
Maybe worry or sadness and pain is feeding critical thoughts about the healthcare system, medical professionals in general, or this doctor in particular. You may have anxiety about your loved one’s condition. Speaking with an authority figure may be deeply uncomfortable. You may notice frustration at not hearing back more quickly from the doctor, annoyance about the doctor calling you back at an inconvenient time.
You might be nervous whether the doctor will be receptive to your concerns, or will be defensive. Recognize your anxiety as it manifests in your body, your breathing, your emotions, and your mind. Accept these anxiety-based thoughts and emotions as they are, without wishing or pushing them away.
Now move to the next step, the bechirah point – the moment in which you grow more aware of your options.
Begin by investigating your habitual reaction in this situation. Maybe your anxiety feeds an instinct to become passive, deferential, or avoid. Maybe it inclines you to get off the phone before fully exploring the issues. This approach would ill-serve your loved one and leave you feeling guilty and more frustrated. Maybe your worry leads you to be overly confrontational. Maybe when you are nervous, you tend to express anger or hostility. That might feel good at the moment, but surely it would be unhelpful and unwise.
Investigate your underlying anxiety, the obstacle drawing you away from your original intention, which risks leading you to express yourself in an unwise and unproductive way. Then practice non-identification by remembering that anxiety is the normal human reaction in this situation, and it is not you. You might silently whisper, “This is anxiety, and it, too, will pass.”
Now, apply the middah of sh’mirat hadibbur, the capacity to use speech for holy purpose. Return to your original intention. What kind of world do you want to create with your speech?
Now you have practiced sh’mirat hadibbur, not allowing your anxiety, anger, or fear to distort your words or to thwart your intention. You’ve spoken clearly, strongly, respectfully, and effectively. You’ve been an effective advocate for your loved one. Your words have emerged from the middot representing your best self.
This is just one scenario we may find ourselves in during everyday life in which sh’mirat hadibbur, choosing wisely when and how to speak, can help us use the gift of speech. Through this middah, we can learn to raise our voice on behalf of ourselves and others who are vulnerable, in a way that emerges from our best selves and our most noble intentions.
If you’d like to go deeper into this practice, I invite you to join IJS Core Faculty Kohenet Keshira heLev Fife and Rebecca Schisler for their upcoming course Mindful Speech as a Spiritual Practice, which starts June 9th. Click here for more information.
We are moving into the fourth week of the Omer, the seven-week period between Passover and Shavuot, traditionally a time for spiritual reflection and growth as we move from freedom towards revelation.¹
This fourth week of the Omer is associated with the kabbalistic sephirah (Divine emanation) of Netzach (“victory” or “endurance”). A middah (spiritual/ethical trait) associated with Netzach is zerizut, the energetic response necessary for fulfilling an intention. The Ba’al Shem Tov, founder of modern Hasidism, taught that as beings “formed in the image of the blessed Holy One who generates worlds … everything we do should be with energy and dedication (b’zerizut), since in every act we are able to serve God.”²
In his ethical masterwork Mesilat Yesharim (“The Path of the Just”), Rabbi Moshe Chayim Luzzato describes two forms of zerizut: one prompting us to act, and one sustaining our action. In the first, we respond immediately as opportunities arise.³
For Luzzato, such zerizut means:
not allowing a mitzvah to become chametz (literally, “soured”). Rather, when the time of its performance comes, or when it happens to present itself, or when the thought of performing it enters one’s mind, one should hurry and hasten to seize hold of it and perform it, and not allow time to go by in between. … [E]ach new second that arises can bring with it a new impediment to the good deed.⁴
Once we’ve initiated action, we shift into the second aspect, “follow through zerizut” or persistence:
[Once] one [has taken] hold of a mitzvah, one should hasten to complete it. … [W]hen one is performing a mitzvah with great swiftness, this will move one’s inner being to kindle aflame also, and the desire and want will increasingly intensify within. But if one acts sluggishly in the movement of one’s limbs, so too the movement of one’s spirit will die down and extinguish. This is something experience can testify to.
Lethargy represents a “shadow aspect” of zerizut. Many of us have a habitual inclination to procrastinate when facing a task, particularly if we anticipate it being unpleasant or challenging. Our lassitude may reflect the yetzer hara operating within us, fulfilling its function of protecting us from frustration or disappointment. Our instinct to avoid may reflect underlying patterns of thought and emotion designed to shield us, such as fear of revealing our limitations. Or we may simply feel overwhelmed, driven by fear of inadequacy to the task.
In mindfulness practice, we witness how our mind generates justifications to rationalize and support our tendencies to delay or avoid. Rather than judge our propensity for procrastination harshly (“I’m so lazy!” “I should do more!”), we apply chesed or compassion to our underlying anxieties, fear, and/or pain. We “befriend” the bases for our sluggishness. We remember that perfection is neither expected nor attainable, and that we are called to do only our small part in addressing even huge tasks. “The day is short and the work is much, the workers are lazy and the reward is great, and the Master of the house is pressing,” Rabbi Tarfon teaches in Pirkei Avot 2:20-21. “It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
Softening the grip of our fear and undermining the associated justifications can free our Netzach energy to manifest zerizut by taking immediate steps responding to what had felt daunting. Once we have “engaged our engine,” we cultivate zerizut as persistence in the face of obstacles and the inclination to slow down.
In these deeply challenging days, many of us may experience a sense of despair and paralysis in the face of so many pressing issues. It is easy to fall prey to a false belief that we cannot make a difference. Some of us are crippled by perfectionism. As we notice inner messages feeding our sense of inadequacy, we meet these with compassion, soothing our fears enough to open our mouths to say what needs to be said, move our feet and go where we are needed, and take small steps towards justice. Moving skillfully through our internal and external hindrances, we practice zerizut by meeting obstacles with compassion and determination. Nevertheless, despite all the internal and external challenges, we persist.
¹ Week Four runs from sundown Thursday, April 23, until sundown on Thursday, April 30.
² Tzava’at HaRIVa”Sh #20 (“The ‘Testament’ of the Baal Shem Tov),” trans. Rabbi Jonathan Slater.
³ In keeping with a rabbinic adage “zerizin makdimin lemitzvah, those who engage in zerizut perform any mitzvah at its earliest possible moment.” Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 4a.
⁴ Rabbi Moshe Hayyim Luzzatto (1707–1746), Mesilat Yesharim (The Path of the Just), Amsterdam, chap. 7 (trans. Sefaria).
Practice originially written as part of the Shevet Reset, a Jewish meditation challenge for younger adults.
It was not. My body immediately rebelled—aching knees, itchy skin, endless shifting. I felt terrible at meditating. But eventually, with nothing else to do but practice, something shifted. One day I noticed a strong itch on my nose and, for the first time, I paused. I felt the urge to scratch. I stayed with the sensation. And then—without me doing anything—the itch passed. On its own.
That itch changed everything. After all, so much of my life was made up of itches I scratched without thinking, feeling powerless not to. Each time I felt lonely, I texted an emotionally unavailable ex. Each time I was angry, my fingers flew to a keyboard, typing faster than I could think, hitting send before I could change my mind. Each time I felt anxious, I would binge eat or drink tequila or shop for clothes I didn’t need, anything to put out the fire of discomfort or pain. If I could slow down enough to watch the life cycle of an itch, as well as the desire to scratch it, without reacting, then suddenly, my habitual ways of dealing with desire were fair game for pause and interruption. As Victor Frankl famously wrote, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
This is your invitation for practice. See, as best as you can, if you can slow down and notice the transitional nature of all things – your breath, the light, an itch. Pay attention to how everything is shifting and changing all the time. See if you can elongate the time between stimulus and response by paying attention to these moments of constant change and transition.
Reflection Questions:
What sustains us during periods of transition? Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell’s teaching on the meaning of the matzah during Passover invites us to explore these questions as we move out of the narrow place in search of liberation.
We are grateful to Rabbi Angela Buchdahl for speaking to us about her new book, Heart of a Stranger. Please enjoy the conversation recording below.
Rabbi Angela Buchdahl is a pioneering Reform rabbi and cantor and one of the most influential Jewish leaders in America today. She became the first Asian American to be ordained as both a cantor and a rabbi in North America when she was invested as a cantor in 1999 and ordained in 2001 by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. As Senior Rabbi of Central Synagogue, she is nationally recognized for innovative worship that reaches large in-person congregations and a global livestream audience. She has been featured on the Today Show, NPR, and PBS, and was named one of Newsweek’s “America’s 50 Most Influential Rabbis.”
Her memoir, Heart of a Stranger, released in October 2025, became an instant New York Times bestseller. In it, she weaves personal narrative and Jewish teaching to explore identity, belonging, and the moral call to encounter the stranger with courage and compassion in a divided world.
Generous donors have offered to MATCH every donation between now and Passover to help pass Jewish mindfulness on to the next generation.
You’ll receive
Guided Mindfulness for Your Seder
as a token of our thanks!
There is a phrase at the heart of the Purim story: nahafokh hu, “it was turned upside down.” The very moment when destruction seemed certain became the moment of redemption. Everything reversed, inside became outside, and the hidden became revealed.
These days, we don’t have to stretch our imaginations far to feel the resonance of this theme — we can simply turn on the news. In our country and our world, so much feels inside out and upside down. Nahafokh hu— we know this feeling.
And yet, the story of Purim has some ancient and hard-won wisdom for us on finding joy and choosing life even when forces of chaos swirl around us.
Consider Queen Esther: she lives inside the palace of a volatile King, hiding her identity, navigating a world of power and danger. The wicked Haman has decreed the destruction of her people, and Mordechai tells us she must go before the king uninvited, an act punishable by death, to plead for their lives.
Esther hesitates, and Morchedai says to her, “U’mi yodea im l’eit kazot higa’at l’malkhut?”— “and who knows whether it was for such a time as this that you attained your royal position?” (Esther 4:14).
Who knows? Maybe you were made for this moment.
Hard times create a doorway into a deeper sense of courage and purpose that comfortable times simply do not require of us. Esther could have stayed silent to protect herself. Instead, she fasted for three days, gathered her strength, and stepped forward into her purpose. Perhaps the moments where we feel most tempted to hide are precisely the moments we were placed here to meet.
On a deeper level, Esther’s story is one about a human response to the experience of divine concealment. One of the most interesting things about the Book of Esther is that God’s name does not appear in it. The very name Esther is understood by the rabbis as connected to the Hebrew word hester — hiddenness. Hester panim, the hiding of God’s face.
And yet our tradition teaches that within this hiddenness, the divine is even more present. Perhaps this is because when God’s face is hidden, the opportunity is created for us to bring sanctity into the world, to intervene in profound acts of courage and love, and to create miracles among ourselves. In hard times, when the presence of God is difficult to perceive, we must find love and goodness within ourselves and share it with one another. We become the revelation.
This is why the mitzvot of Purim are so deeply relational. Mishloach manot— sending gifts of food to friends and neighbors. Matanot l’evyonim— giving gifts to those in need. These practices are the spiritual core of this holiday. When the world turns upside down, we take care of one another. We affirm that we are in this together.
And we affirm that life’s preciousness is worth protecting. As Shabbat departs each week, in the bittersweet moment of havdallah, we sing a line drawn from the Megillah itself: “LaYehudim haitah orah v’simcha v’sasson vikar” — “For the Jews there was light and gladness, joy and honor” (Esther 8:16). We sing these words as a reminder — even as the holiness of Shabbat seems to slip away, even as we return to the ordinary and sometimes painful world, these realities have not disappeared. They are still available to us. Light, gladness, joy, and honor are prophecies of a coming future. They are qualities we can invoke and embody right now.
To invoke light, gladness and joy in times of fear is not denial. It is courageous and sacred. When we feel plunged into distortion and chaos, when we feel that everything is upside down and inside out — let us remember this line. Let us remember the future. Let us open to the embrace of the wisdom traditions that have rooted and carried our people though many moments of chaos and upheaval — and will continue to do so.
This Adar, may we find our inner Esther. May we remember the presence of hidden holiness, and the importance of joy in resilience and resistance. May we take care of ourselves and one another with open hearts and hands. And may we have the courage to step forward into the purpose for which we were made.
Mi-shenichnas Adar, marbim b’simchah. When the month of Adar begins, one increases in joy.
Babylonian Talmud Ta’anit 29a
Mitzvah g’dolah l’hiyot b’simchah tamid. It is a great mitzvah to be joyful, always.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlov, Likutei Moharan II: 24
How do we nurture simchah through spiritual practice – especially in such challenging times, when joy seems hard, maybe even unjust, to access?
Nachman describes simchah as emerging from our capacity to develop greater awareness of the deeper truth of our lives, to “reveal” that which previously had been “concealed” from us:
At every stage in a person’s spiritual growth, there is an aspect of Torah and mitzvot which is ‘revealed’ to him – a level he can understand and practice – and then there is a higher level that is as yet ‘concealed.’ Through prayer, the level that was previously ‘concealed’ becomes ‘revealed,’ leaving an even higher ‘concealed’ level to aspire to. Simchah is when one constantly advances from level to level, turning the ‘concealed’ into the ‘revealed’.¹
For Rabbi Nachman, simchah/joy is not a sentiment synonymous with happiness, but rather a level of spiritual awareness, waking up to the underlying interconnectedness of all. This may help us understand the teaching of Ben Zoma in Pirkei Avot “eyzehu ashir? Ha-sameach b’chelko; “Who is rich? One who rejoices in one’s portion.”²
We can understand chelek/”portion” here to mean our unique perception of what is true in this moment, and understanding it as fundamentally connected to all other perceptions. When we surrender judgment and comparison, and simply attend to and “rejoice” in this breath, this thought, this feeling, this sensation, this moment, we are ashir/rich; we experience a sense of fullness and wholeness. We have everything we need in this moment.
Rabbi Nachman illustrates this kind of simchah in a tale about a shoemaker described as tam (“simple,” unperturbed by complexity and separation) who always rejoiced in every experience even though he was inexpert at his craft, made inferior products, and earned less money than his competitors. When his wife pointed out to him how much better the other shoemakers were doing, he replied, “What do I care about that? That is their work, and this is my work! Why must we think about others? … As long as I make a clear profit, what do I care?’ He was thus always filled with joy and happiness.”³
This kind of simchah/joy born of deep connection to self and others can transform the energy of challenging thoughts and emotions such as pain, anger, shame and guilt. The Ba’al Shem Tov is said to have taught a parable in which the anger of a king is dispelled when his beloved child comes into his presence:
For even if the king is in a state of anger, the very sight of his precious child brings him joy and delight. The anger dissipates of its own, and obviously never returns, all the time his son stands before him, as is human nature. The child, therefore, has no worries, and enters at any time he so wishes and exudes praise without end, for he knows that this brings the king, his father, joy and delight.
Why is it this way? Why do anger and fury disappear when joy and love enter? Where do they go? Yes, this is human nature, but nevertheless, we must try to understand how and why. But this is the power of love and joy: When they prevail, they cause anger and fury to ascend upward toward their root. This is part of the secret knowledge, that these forces of anger and strict judgment are mollified only when they reach their origin, since at its origin, all is pure goodness. It comes out that anger and fury are healed and mollified through love and joy.⁴
Mindfulness does not mean eschewing sadness or anxiety to practice simchah. To the contrary, it involves embracing challenging emotions, thought patterns and narratives with compassion, thereby transforming the energy within them to yield the spiritual state of simchah. Experiencing and cultivating a sense of deep relation to others and to ourselves helps relieve our constrictions and allow the chiyut/life force within them to shift and flow in its proper, more wholesome and holy direction.
We can assist in this process not by trying to compel ourselves to be “happy,” but by understanding our grief, sadness, and pain as portals to profound connection — what Rabbi Jay Michelson aptly describes as “unhappy happiness,”⁵ the simchah/joy born of a sense of spiritual connection.⁶ We don’t have to feel “happy” to experience “joy.”
In any moment of any day, we can choose to engage in “awareness practice,” stepping up, as it were, to the balcony of the mind and simply witnessing there, without judgment, the thoughts and feelings swirling below. From this “God’s eye perspective,” the narratives forming in the mind lose their power, and we intuitively “remember” the infinitely larger context in which we live and of which we are a precious, inseparable part.
As we move into Adar in these deeply unsettling and challenging times, may we find and nurture simchah in the essential, foundational truth that we are profoundly, inextricably connected in an unfathomable web of life energy through time and space.
¹ Likutei Moharan I, 22:9.
² Mishnah Avot 4:1.
³ “The Sophisticate and the Simpleton,” in Rabbi Nachman’s Stories, trans. Aryeh Kaplan (Breslov Research Institute: 1983), p. 168-173.
⁴ Tzava’at Harivash 132.
⁵ Jay Michelson, “What Rabbi Nachman and Pharrell Have in Common,” The Forward, August 16, 2014.
⁶ See David Brooks, “The Difference Between Happiness and Joy,” New York Times, May 7, 2019: “Happiness usually involves a victory for the self. Joy tends to involve the transcendence of self. Happiness comes from accomplishments. Joy comes when your heart is in another. Joy comes after years of changing diapers, driving to practice, worrying at night, dancing in the kitchen, playing in the yard and just sitting quietly together watching TV. Joy is the present that life gives you as you give away your gifts.”
When emotions are running close to the surface, IJS is here for you. Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares his reflections below.
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 meditation, and click here for a transcript of the meditation practice.
For more information about Laura, visit her website at https://www.shinethedivine.com.
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 mystical tradition reads a verse of Torah to say, “For a human being is a tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 20:19). Proverbs depicts the Torah as “a tree of life to them that hold it fast” (Proverbs 3:17-18). Jewish mystics also visualize God as a tree, whose crown is unknowable and whose roots spread into creation.
Today we follow the seder of the medieval Kabbalists of Tzfat. In this practice, Tu BiShvat is not only a New Year’s Day for earthly, material trees, it marks the renewal of the supernal tree in which God’s abundant energy flows from heaven to earth. On this day we participate in the renewal of that tree by traveling its length along the “Four Worlds” of Asiyah (making),Yetsirah (formation), Briyah (creation) and Atsilut (essence).
The seder is also a “tikkun” — a ritual of repair. By eating the fruits and nuts of the trees with special blessings and awareness, we repair our own spiritual brokenness and the brokenness of a world that is not yet as we and God most wish it to be. We drink four cups of juice or wine to represent the FourWorlds and the round of the seasons.
Our Tu BiShvat journey also reminds us of our obligations to the earth — “To till it and tend it” (Genesis 2:15), as God told Adam. Today, we are witnesses to many forms of environmental destruction — the erosion of the ozone layer, global warming, deforestation, species extinction, toxic chemicals, and runaway population growth. We see that the poor suffer disproportionately from these illnesses.
Amid the snow of winter, let us reconnect with the world of root and leaf, affirming our faith that spring will come.
Click here for the full text of this Tu Bishvat seder.
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat is a poet, liturgist, and serves as spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, MA. She blogs at The Velveteen Rabbi, and is participating in the current cohort of the IJS Clergy Leadership Program.
Rabbi Jeffrey Goldwasser serves as spiritual leader of Temple Sinai in Cranston RI, and is a graduate of the second rabbinic cohort of the Clergy Leadership Program.
We are grateful to Sarah Hurwitz for speaking to us about her new book, As a Jew. Please enjoy the conversation recording below. We have two versions of the recording available, with and without ASL interpretation, thanks to Lisa Pershan.
For nearly 15 years, Sarah Hurwitz built a career finding just the right words. She served as a White House speechwriter from 2009 to 2017, first as a senior speechwriter for President Barack Obama and then as head speechwriter for First Lady Michelle Obama. Sarah worked with Mrs. Obama to craft widely-acclaimed addresses and traveled with her across America and to five continents.
Sarah’s first book, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life—in Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There), chronicled her rediscovery of Judaism with the same clarity and insight that defined her political writing. The book was named a finalist for two National Jewish Book Awards and for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature.
If you would like a copy of Sarah’s latest book, As a Jew, you can purchase it here.
Earlier this week we held a beautiful celebration of IJS’s first 25 years. Below is a recording of Rabbi Josh Feigelson’s speech from the event.
What a night! An Evening of Light was joyful, spiritual, and full of connection. Together, in the sanctuary at B’nai Jeshurun and across the country via livestream, we celebrated 25 years of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, welcomed Hanukkah, and honored Dorian Goldman and Marvin Israelow for their extraordinary leadership and generosity.
The music, the reflections, and the energy in the room reminded us why this community matters — and how deeply we’re all connected by our shared pursuit of mindfulness, compassion, and light.
We invite you to watch the recording below:
Thank you to IJS Core Faculty, Kohenet Keshira HaLev Fife, for a beautiful teaching and intention setting for lighting the Hannukah candles this year.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook to see our full series of practices for lighting your Hannukah candles with intention!
Registration is now open for our winter courses! Use Code WINTER20 for $20 off Registration
Check out our full winter course lineup!
“Knowing our roots” means cultivating conscious contact with a deeper source of nurture and support. This core Jewish spiritual practice is embodied by Joseph, the protagonist in the Torah reading cycle which coincides with and follows Hanukkah, and which concludes the Book of Genesis.
Throughout the story of Joseph and his brothers, he manifests the middah (spiritual/ethical quality) of bitachon, awareness of being implanted in and connected to a source in which he trusts. When Joseph interprets the dreams of the butler and baker in prison and, when he is freed, the dreams of Pharaoh, he insists that God, not he, is the source of their interpretations. According to Rashi, Joseph in effect tells Pharaoh that “the wisdom is not mine, but God will answer and put an answer into my mouth that will bring peace to Pharaoh.” Through his quality of bitachon or trust, Joseph understands himself simply as a conduit, a vessel through which the Divine source will flow.
Despite the manifold challenges and injustices Joseph experiences throughout the narrative (being sold into slavery, imprisoned unjustly, and forgotten by those on whom he depended) he maintains this awareness of a greater or deeper power operating within him. His consciousness of and trust in this process does not waver, even when its energy leads him into extreme challenges and painful experiences.
Strikingly, throughout the Joseph narrative in Genesis this deeper, greater power is never described as operating overtly. God functions down below the surface, in the roots, never “speaking” explicitly to Joseph or anyone else. The hidden reality of the Divine is clearly present but, as depicted in this the narrative, human beings must acknowledge and draw it out. The character of Joseph illuminates and symbolizes this process of drawing up sacred energy through the roots.
Joseph is associated in Jewish mystical tradition with Tzadik, one who does that which is right, acting in alignment with the deeper flow of the Divine. The Friday evening liturgy of Kabbalat Shabbat features Psalm 92 (click here for a healing chant by MIRAJ, a trio consisting of Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael, Juliet Spitzer, and Rabbi Margot Stein), which concludes:
tzadik katamar yifrach,
the righteous bloom like a date palm, thrive like a cedar in Lebanon,
sh’tulim b’veit Adonai, b’chatzrot eloheinu yafrichu,
planted in the house of the Holy One, they flourish in the courts of our God.
Od y’nuvun b’seivah d’sheinim v’ra’ananim yehiyu
In old age they still produce fruit; they are full of sap and freshness,
Lehagid ki yashar Adonai, tzuri v’lo avlata bo
attesting that the Holy One is upright, my rock, in whom there is no flaw.
Our roots, planted in the Divine, represent the nexus between ourselves and the deeper Source from which we emerge and which is constantly causing us to flourish. When we grow in awareness of this constant process—when we “know our roots”—then we, like Joseph, can experience a sense of bitachon, trusting in that flow and our ability to draw it up through ourselves into the world. Through this practice, moment by moment each of us has the potential to act as a tzadik, one who does what is right, manifesting the Divine flow, healing and repairing ourselves and our world.
We are grateful to Rodger Kamenetz for sharing his insights with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.
Rodger Kamenetz is an award-winning poet, author, and teacher. Of his 13 books, his best known is The Jew in the Lotus, the story of rabbis making a holy pilgrimage through India to meet with the Dalai Lama. His account of their historic dialogue became an international bestseller, prompting a reevaluation of Judaism in the light of Buddhist thought. Now in its 37th printing overall, The Jew in the Lotus is a staple of college religion courses. The New York Times called it a “revered text.” A PBS documentary followed, and a sequel, Stalking Elijah, was awarded the National Jewish Book Award for Jewish Thought.
If you would like a copy of Rodger’s book, you can purchase it here.
If you would like to continue studying with Rodger, learn more and register for his upcoming course, Seeing into the Life of Things
Note: The Jewish spiritual tradition uses the term ‘ayin tovah (lit. “a good or favorable eye”) to describe a specific way of focusing our attention on the good. This language may feel inaccessible to readers who are blind or visually impaired. If you are such an individual, we invite you to adapt this teaching to your own experience in a manner that feels more accessible.
It’s easy these days to focus and even fixate on things that seem to be going wrong: rising antisemitism, uncertainty about the future of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, widespread political corruption and corporate greed, threats to democracy and civil rights, and rampant gun violence—to name a few of the big ones. The more we tap into our newsfeeds, the more anxious, powerless, embittered, and hopeless we may feel, as our negativity bias is confirmed repeatedly.
Craig and Devon Hase, contemporary meditation teachers, define it as follows:
“[It’s] the simple but powerful idea that we, as humans, are more likely to [focus on] what’s bad than what’s good. Why? Most likely it’s evolution. Evolution doesn’t care whether you’re happy. Evolution just cares whether you pass genes along. And so, if you’re living in a jungle with a bunch of attack cats and poisonous snakes, better to be on high alert all the time, and a little stressed out, than relaxed and happy and dead at sixteen.
Maybe all that made sense ten thousand years ago. But these days, with the advent of the information age, our negativity bias is continually enforced…which means your negativity bias is being confirmed and confirmed and confirmed, until all you see when you look out at the world is people doing bad stuff and the planet going up in flames.”
—Craig and Devon Hase, How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Survival Guide for Modern Life, pp. 58–60
The issue is not that many problems aren’t real or don’t deserve our attention and concern. It’s that there are also many wonderful things happening in our lives and world that we tend not to notice when caught in negativity bias.
Perhaps this is why Rabbi Meir, one of the greatest sages from the time of the Mishnah, stated:
“We are obligated to recite one hundred blessings each day” (B. Talmud Menachot 43b).
He recognized that we need to proactively commit to focusing on the good—to cultivate the middah (soul-trait) known as ‘ayin tovah (lit. “a good or favorable eye”).
“Yes,” you might say, “but how?”
Craig and Devon Hase offer some concrete guidance:
“[Focus on] the good. How many of us train our [inner] eye to [focus on] the good?…And how often, in our daily rush of bad news, bad politics, and bad hair days, does the mind incline itself toward what’s already good?
[H]ere’s the thing…most people, most of the time, actually treat each other pretty okay. And though we are in the midst of an ecological crisis that needs to be addressed yesterday…, we can still train the mind to [focus], right now, in this present moment, on everything that is going right. Not because we are trying to fool ourselves, but because we have already been fooled, and we need to reset the focus and [attend] with [a] fresh [perspective] to what is already true so that we can build the resilience we’ll need to address all the things that have to get done today, tomorrow, and for all the days after that” (ibid.).
The invitation is not to ignore problematic things by retreating from the world or burying our heads in the sand. Rather, it’s to focus on the manifold blessings in our lives so that we can cultivate enough gratitude, appreciation, and resilience to turn toward difficulty with a buoyant, open heart—without becoming flooded or overwhelmed.
To support you in this work, I invite you to keep a gratitude journal each day, working your way up to listing one hundred blessings per day by the time our next newsletter goes out in December.
Begin small—for a few days, list five things for which you’re grateful. Then move up to ten, adding five new things when you’re ready, and so on. Don’t worry if you never make it to one hundred. The point is to intentionally direct your attention toward the good, to notice what doing so feels like in body, heart, and mind, and to offer spontaneous words of blessing.
If you find it hard to begin, here’s a list of one hundred things for which you might cultivate gratitude, composed by my teacher, friend, and colleague at IJS, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife and IJS Kivvun Cohort 6.
And guess what? If you pray from the siddur three times daily and recite the traditional blessings over food, going to the bathroom, and ritual activities, you’re already reciting one hundred blessings a day. Over this next month, you might try to recite more of them with kavvanah (intention, feeling, mindfulness), really pausing to notice the blessings they’re pointing to.
For example, when you praise God for “clothing the naked” (malbish ‘arumim) during the morning blessings, pay close attention to the sensations of your clothing on your skin and notice if gratitude might arise spontaneously as you do.
Especially when taking in the news, make a practice of pausing for a few moments to remind yourself of some of the blessings you’ve recorded in your gratitude journal. Notice how doing so impacts your negativity bias and your capacity to lean into difficulty without becoming flooded.
Perhaps in this way you might begin to develop a new habit of moving about the world with an ‘ayin tovah, focusing on the good as a gateway to gratitude and resilience.
We are grateful to Jane Eisner for sharing her insights with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.
Jane Eisner has spent her career breaking barriers in journalism. The first woman to edit Wesleyan University’s student paper, she went on to hold senior roles at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years before becoming the first female editor-in-chief of the Forward, where she expanded readership and earned multiple awards. Eisner has also reported for leading outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, taught at Penn and Columbia, and written Taking Back the Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in Our Democracy (2004). She recently completed an interpretive biography of Carole King for Yale’s Jewish Lives series, where she explores the legendary musician’s extraordinary career, personal struggles, and cultural impact. Today, she serves as writer-at-large for the Forward and consults for the independent news site Shtetl.
If you would like a copy of Jane’s book, you can purchase it here.
The Hebrew month of Cheshvan brings a welcome relief from the spiritual highs of Tishrei— we get to take a break from large communal gatherings and integrate all that transpired for us during the high holidays. With more space for solitude and intimate time at home, we have a chance to bring renewed energy to the inner work of spiritual practice and prayer. In ancient Israel, Cheshvan is when people began to pray for rain.
From a spiritual perspective, rain represents all that we need for life to bloom forth and flourish; it symbolizes the possibility of sustenance, and the union of heaven and earth. Our tradition teaches that unlike dew, the proper rainfall in its season is dependent upon our prayers and deeds. Following the description of six days of creation, Torah says that vegetation had not yet sprouted upon the earth because it had not yet rained, as there was no human to work the land. Rashi, citing the midrash, comments that the rain had not yet fallen upon the earth because there was no human to pray for it. Indeed, the midrash seems to suggest that the human being was essentially created to pray for rain. Our mystical tradition teaches that we as humans are the intermediaries between heaven and earth, and the channel that makes that connection possible is prayer.
This month, we might focus on revitalizing our prayer practices. We can bring mindfulness here by unifying our body, heart and mind within the action of prayer itself. The Baal Shem Tov shares some beautiful instructions on this via his homiletic reading of God’s command to Noah: “Make a shining stone for the ark.” The Baal Shem Tov points out that the word “ark” in Hebrew— teivah— can also be translated as “word.” The verse continues, “Come, you and your entire household, into the teivah.” A person must go deeply inside of the words of prayer, bringing their heart, attention, and all of their being— their full household— to the words, until they begin to sparkle like a glass window through which the divine can radiate.
This approach to prayer invites a slowing down. You might choose just one verse from the prayer book to focus on, bringing all of your attention to each word until you can sense its meaning in your heart and even in your body, and then proceed to the next. As an example, you can nurture this practice with a simple morning prayer—
“Modeh ani l’fanecha, ruach chai v’kayam” — Grateful am I before you, living and eternal spirit” — or “Elohai neshama shenatata bi tehorah hi” — “My God, the soul that you have given me is pure.”
Slow down enough to feel the essence of every single word. Notice the impact it has on your mind, and on your heart.
May our practice and our prayers in this watery month of Cheshvan allow all that transpired in the high holidays to soak deeply into our beings, so that we can embody and nourish the seeds of our intentions for the year ahead.
I’m imagining us in Noah’s ark.
As the Hebrew month of Cheshvan begins and a new cycle of Torah reading is initiated, we read Parshat Noah. We encounter an ark; Noah, his family and a few of every living species; and a flood of utter destruction that wipes out all life on earth.
For the past two years, I have been holding the narrative of Noah’s ark close to me as a source of spiritual inquiry and practice, engaging with questions like – What qualities did Noah cultivate that preserved him in a violent generation? What is the spiritual practice of taking refuge in the midst of the flood of corruption and chaos? How did sanctuary in the ark school Noah’s heart and mind during the three hundred and seventy-eight days he lived in it?
These are worthy questions but in the fragile newness and uncertainty of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, I am holding a different question. I am folding into this other question all the feelings of witnessing the return home, finally, of twenty living hostages with weeping, relief and something adjacent to joy but too cracked and broken to wholly call it joy, and with heartbreak for the families who are still waiting to receive the bodies of their killed loved ones, and with unresolved questions about sufficient aid entering Gaza, and witnessing Palestinian families returning to the rubble that was their homes, and holding my breath (and still breathing) as the unclear, unstable future of these two nations slowly takes shape amid layers of profound grief, pain, possibilities and an unclear road ahead. The flood is not over but, perhaps, the worst of the destruction has ended. I’m imagining us in Noah’s ark, coming to rest, finally, on the peaks of the mountains of Ararat as the floodgates of heaven and the deep are stopped up and the waters begin to recede. I’m asking – What spiritual guidance can we draw from Parshat Noah about the beginning of transition out of destruction and survival, and into the next stage of reclaiming life?
After a hundred and fifty days tossed on unstable water, the ark comes to stillness on a mountaintop. Tenuous as it is, there is enough solid ground for the ark to rest – va’tanach ha’teyvah. The ark rests. Noah rests. And he opens a window to the wide sky, an opening to the air, to light and to the devastation outside. Then, in order to track the slow progress of the receding waters which takes another two hundred and twenty-eight days, Noah first sends out a raven. Later, in multiple attempts, he sends a dove.
What is the dove/yonah? The dove is a small, slender bird. Be’er Mayim Chaim notes that in the Song of Songs, the dove is referenced as yonati, tamati – my dove, my love. It is the tender, cherished beloved. It becomes the symbol of peace. But so soon after horror, loss, anger and fear, this tenderness cannot be released first. It will not have anywhere to land.
So before sending out the dove, Noah sends out the raven/orev, a large, rough squawking bird that “went back and forth.” Hasidic commentators understand this movement as a reference to the changing dynamic of spiritual expansion and contraction – ratzo va’shov. Spiritual growth in general is not a linear progression. All the more so in extreme circumstances – we are constricted, we fall open, we expand and we shrink. Be’er Mayim Chaim adds that orev also means “a mixture.” The raven embodies a complicated mixture of opposites, “of bad within the good and good within the bad.” What a mixed, fraught moment this is, in which the heart floods open, washed with relief, able to finally take deeper breaths, and the heart grips with pained constriction, back and forth.
At the Jerusalem rally on October 11th, after the ceasefire was declared and the return of the remaining hostages was imminent, Rachel Goldberg Polin expressed this potently. Speaking about the book of Kohelet/Ecclesiastes, which we just read on Sukkot, she said that Kohelet teaches, “there is a season and a time for everything. But now, today, we are being asked to digest all of those seasons, all of those times, at the exact same second – winter, spring, summer, fall – experience all four right now. It says there is a time to be born and a time to die and we have to do both right now. It says there is a time to weep and a time to laugh and we have to do both right now…It says there is a time to tear and a time to heal and we have to do both right now…and it says there is a time to sob and there is a time to dance and we have to do both right now.”
This is not only descriptive of what so many of us feel. It is prescriptive of the soul-work that is ours to do. This is a time to consciously feel and know the intense mixture of expansive joy and the contraction of pain, of release and anger, grief and celebration, all at once. It is exhausting, messy and intense. It is also alive, agile and true. To attend to each one means not letting opposing truths or feelings cancel each other out. As we turn to face all the realities that are present and all that have been present over these two years, the wild mix of emotions deserves space, patience and mindful attention so they can move through us and so that we can keep our hearts as agile and our thinking as clear as possible.
So often, only after the worst is over, only when it is safe enough to let go of the ways we have been pushing or gripping in the face of looming danger and teetering vulnerability, can we begin to attend to the extent of the wreckage, and also begin to heal, build and hope. Our hearts are raw and tender from these past two years. The flood is not over but this time of receding waters asks us to learn from Noah’s waiting, meeting each stage of transition with presence and patience and discerning what is needed. This period asks us to exercise our hearts and awareness with a different kind of diligence, a different kind of attention to the many oppositional dimensions that exist together at once – to meet them, feel them, know them and release them into flight. Only then can we access the tenderness underneath. Only then can the dove, the tender wings of loving and new life, leave the protective shelter of the ark and find a genuine place to begin to build its nest.
I want to leave you with an excerpt from Leonard Cohen’s poem, Prayer for Messiah, giving these images moving expression.
O send out the raven ahead of the dove
O sing from your chains where you’re chained in a cave
your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
your blood in my ballad collapses the grave
¹ Hasidic commentator, Rabbi Chaim Tyrer of Czernowitz (1760–1816).
² The mother of Hersh Goldberg Polin who was murdered in Hamas captivity.
[New York, NY, September 17, 2025] – Rebecca Schisler, a core faculty member at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS), received the prestigious Pomegranate Prize given by the Covenant Foundation. She is one of just 10 Jewish educators in the U.S. to receive the 2025 honor and the second IJS faculty member to have earned the coveted designation. The organization presented the annual awards at a reception held on Tuesday, September 16th, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, NY.
At IJS, Rebecca leads the development of innovative programming for younger adults, most notably creating the organization’s Shevet Jewish Mindfulness Community, a program for those in their 20s and 30s that includes a 30-minute weekly online practice, an annual retreat, and in-person programming in the Bay Area, Brooklyn, and Cambridge. According to IJS President & CEO Josh Feigelson, Rebecca is transforming how younger adults engage with IJS and with their own practice.
“Rebecca is at the forefront of a movement to engage young Jews in a Judaism that speaks to them,” he wrote in a recommendation letter to The Covenant Foundation. “It is a Judaism that combines mindful living, meditation, chant, dance, somatic practice, ecological awareness, and earth-based practices—with the depth and richness of our people’s texts, traditions, and the rhythms of Jewish life.”
According to the Covenant Foundation, The Pomegranate Prize “is designed to recognize emerging leaders in the field of Jewish education by encouraging them in their pursuits and offering the resources and connections necessary to accelerate their development, deepen their self-awareness, and amplify their impact on the field.”
“When Rebecca began teaching at IJS three years ago, we had virtually no offerings specifically for young adults,” said Fiegelson. “Since that time, Rebecca has led the creation of weekly online and in-person offerings for people in their 20s and 30s, resulting in more than 5,000 new Instagram followers and dozens of meaningful new programs that have helped thousands of young adults struggling to find their place in American Jewish life today.”
In addition to her leadership role at IJS, Rebecca also teaches mindfulness for Or HaLev and Stanford University’s School of Medicine. Previously, she served as an educator for Wilderness Torah, The Awakened Heart Project, EdenVillage Camp, Urban Adamah, and HaMakom. Rebecca also co-authored the Mahloket Matters curriculum while serving as a senior social/emotional learning consultant at the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators.
A rabbinical student at ALEPH, Rebecca is passionate about integrating ancestral wisdom traditions with innovative approaches to personal and collective healing and liberation. She teaches Jewish spirituality as an embodied, transformational, and accessible path, with relevant and timely wisdom for all.
“I’m so grateful for the opportunity to do such meaningful work and for all the ways I’ve been able to grow here at IJS over the past three years,” Rebecca shared with IJS staff immediately following the event. “More than anything, I’m grateful to get to collaborate with such incredible souls.”
About the Institute for Jewish Spirituality
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) is a sacred haven for nurturing the mind, body, soul, and spirit. Since 1999, we have helped countless people navigate our turbulent world by learning to slow down, reconnect with themselves, and find a greater sense of purpose — all grounded in mindfulness and the deep wisdom of Jewish tradition. From guided meditation and contemplative text study to leadership training and retreats, IJS creates opportunities to become more mindful, compassionate, and resilient—and build a more just and peaceful world together.
###
One of the central (and paradoxical) themes of the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, is that accepting our mortality opens the gate to personal transformation. The extent to which we make peace with the end of our lives helps us begin to live more fully today.
Moses models this kind of radical acceptance as we move towards the end of the annual Torah reading cycle. The Sages imagined Moses vigorously resisting God’s decree that he should die before reaching the Promised Land, moving progressively through the five stages described by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in her classic work, On Death and Dying¹: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and finally, acceptance.
His ultimate acceptance of his demise enables Moses to request and extend forgiveness to the people he has led through the wilderness – and to praise God, with whom he has been negotiating furiously:
They [the heavenly court] came and said to Moses: ‘The hour has arrived for you to depart from the world.’ He said to them: ‘Wait until I bless Israel, for they have not found contentment from me all my days, because of the rebukes and warnings with which I rebuked them’ … [Moses] said to Israel: ‘I have caused you a lot of grief over the Torah and over the commandments, but now forgive me.’ They said to him: ‘Our Master, you are forgiven.’ Israel also arose and said: ‘Moses our Master, we have angered you a lot and increased the burden upon you. Forgive us.’ He said to them: ‘You are forgiven.’ They came and said to him: ‘The moment has arrived for you to depart from the world.’ [Moses] said: ‘Blessed be the name of the one who lives and abides forever.’²
In accepting mortality, Moses finds a gateway to forgiveness, transformation, and gratitude, rather than being stuck in blaming and bitterness.
Throughout the Days of Awe, we are like Moses, face to face with our finitude. Yom Kippur is a voluntary near-death experience. We rehearse our own deaths and imagine our own eulogies. We wear white or dress in a kittel representing our own burial shrouds. We recite the Vidui, the confession we are to profess before we die, say Yizkor prayers for those we have loved and lost, remember our martyrs, and end the day as we are meant to end our lives, by chanting the Shema. We abstain from food, drink and sex, freeing ourselves from our customary focus on our bodily wants and needs. These practices enable us, like Moses, to attend to deeper, more enduring truths than our own, inevitably bounded physical survival.
A Hasidic teaching observes that Moses’s awareness that he would die before reaching the Land prompted him to see beyond himself and pray on behalf of the Israelites. Earlier in Deuteronomy (3:23), Moses tells the Israelites, “Vaetchanan el Adonai baeit hahi leimor, I pleaded with YHVH at that time, saying….” (Deut. 3:23). Rabbi Mordecai Yosef Lainer of Izbica (1801-1854) interprets this verse as indicating a shift in Moses’s awareness stemming from the finality of his death:
Why did Moses see fit to tell Israel about this prayer? It might appear as if his prayer accomplished nothing! Nevertheless, through this Moses made it known to the people that his prayer became a protection for them: “Even in your undertakings in the Land of Israel I will be your Rabbi, and so throughout the generations.” He demonstrated to them that he accomplished something through his prayer.
We learn this from the word “I pleaded with (va-etchanan)” – which is in the reflexive form. This means that Moses was filled with supplications, and his prayer flowed in his mouth. This signifies that God aroused him to pray, and so surely this prayer will not return unfulfilled. That is signified in the phrase “at that time (ba-eit hahi)”: Moses said, “Even after the Holy Blessed One had sworn not to bring me into Israel, God nevertheless did not prevent me from praying.”³
In this interpretation, the acceptance of death opens Moses’s awareness even more to the needs of others, allowing prayer to rise organically from concern for them rather than from self-service.
Our mindfulness practice is rooted in hitlamdut, curious, non-judgmental attention to the truth of our experience—in this case, our habitual inclinations about our mortality. Some of us lack the luxury of denial and are forced by illness and/or age to confront death. Some of us struggle with depression and suicidal tendencies, and must practice keeping thoughts of mortality in their proper, healthy place. For those of us who devote much psychic energy to avoiding our mortality, the example of Moses teaches us to turn towards that which we would rather avoid.
Psychologist Marsha Linehan describes this capacity for radical acceptance as “the ability to perceive one’s environment without putting demands on it to be different; to experience one’s current emotional state without attempting to change it; and to observe one’s own thoughts and action patterns without attempting to stop or control them.”⁴ Practicing acceptance is an opportunity to turn towards even that which we most wish to deny. We notice the power of our resistance, and apply compassion rather than judgment; we console ourselves by infusing grief with love.
As we move into this season of death and rebirth, may we receive the deep lessons of accepting (without embracing) our inevitable death. May it help us turn with greater urgency towards life, with more clarity, wisdom, and compassion for ourselves and others. May we envision previously unnoticed transformational possibilities and be freed from that which keeps us bound to old, familiar patterns. May our capacity to accept endings engender myriad beginnings within us and our world.
Taking the teaching into practice:
Taking the teaching into prayer practice: Unetaneh Tokef, a prayer featured in the High Holiday liturgy, includes the deeply challenging reference to “who will live and who will die” in the year ahead. It also includes a passage which goes to the heart of accepting our temporality: adam yesodo mei-afar, our origin is dust. Experiment with this part of the prayer, using this lovely melody (watch and listen here to a melody sung by Cantor Steve Zeidenberg and choir at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in NYC; for the audio, click here for the same melody sung by Cantor Ayelet Porzecanski; for classical hazzanut, try Cantor Leibele Waldman’s recorded version.
¹Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, On Death and Dying (New York: Macmillan, 1970).
²Midrash Tanchuma, Vaetchanan 6:2.
³Rabbi Mordecai Yosef Lainer of Izbica, Mei HaShiloach on Vaetchanan (trans. Rabbi Jonathan Slater).
⁴Marsha Linehan, Ph.D., Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment of Borderline Personality Disorder, (Guilford: 2018), p. 147.
Below is an excerpt from Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell’s teaching for the first week of Elul, as part of The Shofar Project 5785. Our guide this year is Rabbi Alan Lew’s now-classic book, This is Real, and You are Completely Unprepared.
Our Elul practice doesn’t begin with a focus on our behaviors as one might suspect. Rather, it begins by shining a light on our perception. Rabbi Lew introduces Elul with the Torah portion of Re’eh, which he translates as “Look!” He writes (p.65):
Pay attention to your life. Every moment in it is profoundly mixed. Every moment contains a blessing and a curse. Everything depends on our seeing¹ our lives with clear eyes, seeing the potential blessing in each moment as well as the potential curse, choosing the former, forswearing the latter.
Our capacity to choose wisely depends on our capacity to perceive clearly. This isn’t a seeing that depends on vision, but one that comes from attentiveness of heart and mind. Elul begins our practice with this commitment to seeing ourselves as clearly as we can and to engage in cheshbon-ha-nefesh, a soul accounting.
In addition to prayer, meditation, and mindful focus, you may want to try one more practice for cultivating clearer perception: look up. Put differently, we can shift our attention from the details and minutiae of our lives to instead take in a broader landscape or perspective. Many of us spend many hours every day with our bodies hunched over devices, attending to the endless details of our daily lives or scrolling through our feeds and messages. This curved-in posture mimics that of a person who is sad and despondent. This physical posture can induce us to feel low and constricted in spirit. Conversely, looking up, both literally and figuratively, improves our posture and may also lift the spirits and broaden our lived sense of our moment. As R. Jonathan Sacks writes:
This is one of the enduring themes of Tanach: the importance of looking up. “Lift up your eyes on high, and see who has created these things,” says Isaiah (Is. 40:26). “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From there will my help come” said King David in Psalm 121.
When we shift our attention so as to take in a larger perspective, we open to the world around us, bringing in a quality of spaciousness into our awareness. This spaciousness exists whether or not we pay attention to it. When we do pay attention to it, and then reflect on our lives within the context of that spaciousness, our view of ourselves changes as it integrates this broader view. To perceive ourselves and the world around us more clearly, we must also look beyond our narrow concerns. Take time to actively shift your attention, to roll back your shoulders, lift your chain heavenward, and breathe deeply.
¹ It is important to note that “seeing”, as used here, is metaphorical and does not rely on the literal ability to see.
A FREE four-week online program for the Hebrew month of Elul.
A FREE four-week study and practice group for young adults.
We are thrilled to welcome six extraordinary leaders to the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s Board of Directors. Each brings a deep commitment to Jewish spiritual practice, a wealth of professional expertise, and a passion for shaping a vibrant and inclusive Jewish future.
Our newest board members reflect the communities we seek to serve—diverse in background, geography, and life experience, and united in their dedication to the mission and vision of IJS. They are creators, changemakers, and bridge-builders, with talents ranging from entrepreneurship to spiritual leadership, from human rights advocacy to community organizing.
Meet our new board members:
This new class of board members includes younger Jews, individuals from varied geographic backgrounds, as well as Jews of Color and Mizrahi Jews—reflecting IJS’s vision for an inclusive board that represents more of our participants and the greater Jewish community.
We are entering an exciting period of growth and innovation at IJS, and we know these new voices will help guide us with wisdom, creativity, and heart. Please join us in welcoming Éloge, Havi, Lisa, Aliza, Benjamin, and Chloe to the IJS Board!
On July 20, 42 Jewish spiritual leaders from around the world will gather at the Pearlstone Retreat Center to meditate, pray, sing, study, and practice mindful movement, kicking off the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) 2025-2026 Clergy Leadership Program (CLP).
With nearly 600 alumni now bringing mindfulness practices to synagogues, campuses, schools, organizations, and communities throughout the country, IJS’s flagship course has been reshaping the landscape of American Judaism—one “mindful moment” at a time.
The clergy of the CLP will spend the next 18 months together, in person and on Zoom, learning and practicing a variety of Jewish spiritual practices grounded in mindfulness in a supportive community of practice. The goal is to nurture their spiritual lives, foster greater calm and resilience, and expand their skills in cultivating consciousness and character in their leadership. They’ll also learn to embody mindful Jewish spiritual practice in their communities, fostering greater spirituality and wellbeing for everyone.
One of the cohort members, a freelance rabbi and community builder, looks forward to “being able to have a stronger mindfulness practice—to ground me, to allow me to embrace the magic, to help others to do the same.” This program, she says, would provide connection, structure, and a vessel for growth for me as I create the next season of my rabbinic work and life.”
The 2025 cohort includes an array of ordained rabbis, cantors, and kohanot (Hebrew priestesses) in positions of spiritual leadership—as synagogue clergy, educators, Hillel professionals, activists, ritualists, executives, and entrepreneurs. They span the denominational spectrum and serve communities across the U.S., Israel, and Europe.
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality celebrates the diversity of this group, which includes Jews of Color, Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews, LGBTQ+ folks, people with disabilities, and individuals with a range of political perspectives.
The program will include affinity groups led by faculty who hold each identity, and will feature an updated curriculum incorporating more teachings from people with historically marginalized identities alongside traditional Jewish text. IJS is working to further refine a pedagogy of inclusion that enables each participant to feel that they are being held and cared for in the fullness of their humanity, that their spiritual needs are being met, and that their unique living Torah can inspire and elevate us all.
The core practices of the program—prayer, song, chant, meditation, embodied practice, tikkun middot (character refinement) practices, and Torah study—are informed by various strands within the Jewish mystical tradition and serve to deepen participants’ spiritual awareness, authenticity, equanimity, self-compassion, and resilience.
When clergy learn to practice mindful leadership, enriched by Jewish wisdom, they can more skillfully engage their inner lives as a powerful force for personal and collective transformation. By leading from a place of inner wholeness, clarity, balance, and love, they can more readily give of themselves and guide the spiritual evolution of others.
CLP alumna Cantor Kerith Spencer-Shapiro, said of her experience:
“The CLP… cohort changed my clergy life, reinvigorating and lifting up my personal prayer practice and allowing me ‘permission’ to bring together all of the spiritual elements of my whole person. I am ever grateful to IJS for continuing to be a foundational part of who I have grown into as a clergy member and meditation teacher.”
The program faculty includes Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, Rabbi Miriam Margles, Rabbi Dorothy Richman, and Cantor Lizzie Shammash—each of whom is a seasoned teacher of Jewish spiritual practices grounded in mindfulness.
Beyond catalyzing Jewish spiritual renewal, the program is designed to meet a pressing need: Many clergy describe feeling depleted and overwhelmed after leading through years of turmoil from COVID, political strife, the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, and rising antisemitism worldwide.
Kohenet Amanda Nube, a Jewish educator at Chochmat HaLev, a Jewish Renewal congregation in Berkeley, California, wrote: “I think being in a cohort of mindful Jewish clergy at this moment, in this year and coming years, is what we ALL NEED. Cultivating mindfulness of our strengths, our weaknesses, and our leadership could not be more critical for me personally at this very moment in time and history.”
IJS will tailor the 2025-2026 curriculum to hold participants amidst their pain and overwhelm, and help them refill their inner reservoirs, restore their balance, deepen their resilience, and lead with greater clarity, responsiveness, and courage.
For many, this is a sanctuary of self-care after years of caring for others, and an opportunity to revitalize their service with enriched resilience and a sense of sacred purpose.
At a recent convening of CLP alumni, Rabbi Naamah Kelman, herself an alumna of the program and former Dean of Hebrew Union College/Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, urged clergy to nurture themselves before serving others: “In these moments of darkness and despair,” she said, “I think we need to—as clergy, as caretakers, as leaders of our community—find that place of light within ourselves.”
The members of CLP 2025-2026 are ready to do just that:
Cantor Tracy Fishbein, Cantor at The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Shalom, in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote: “Like many in 2024, I find myself often overwhelmed and exhausted by the constant giving of myself to those in both my personal and professional lives. I am hopeful that this program can give me some tools to cope with the overwhelm and reconnect with my own holy spark that is sometimes lost in the work that I do. I am hopeful that this program will allow me to grow my patience for my children, colleagues, and congregants.”
IJS is also preparing clergy to inspire the next generation of young people to connect to Jewish life in new and sacred ways. At a time when many Jewish communities are shrinking, IJS is growing—and that’s because there’s more interest in the healing power of Jewish mindfulness than ever before, especially among youth.
Jes Heppler, one of the young IJS leaders, said: “IJS is meeting a spiritual hunger that many young people have today—the desire to figure out what Judaism should look like in our lives.”
By helping clergy tap into this yearning and nurture it across the U.S. and abroad, IJS is building on this valuable momentum and sparking a resurgence of contemporary Jewish spiritual life.
IJS is particularly grateful to the Righteous Persons Foundation and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Family Foundation for their support of the Clergy Leadership Program.
Lisa Arbisser – SAJ: Judaism That Stands For All (New York, NY)
Caryn Aviv – Judaism Your Way (Denver, CO)
Rachel Barenblat – Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (Williamstown, MA)
Deana Berezin – Temple Israel (Omaha, NE)
Vera Broekhuysen – Congregation Beth El of the Sudbury River Valley (North Andover, MA)
Daniel Burg – Beth Am Synagogue (Baltimore, MD)
Cornelia Dalton – Westchester Jewish Center (Westchester, NY)
Devorah Felder-Levy – Congregation Shir Hadash (Los Gatos, CA)
Tracy Fishbein – The Temple, Congregation Ohabai Sholom (Nashville, TN)
Andy Gordon – Bolton Street Synagogue (Baltimore, MD)
Yosef Goldman – Freelance Spiritual Artist (Brooklyn, NY)
Ari Hart – Skokie Valley Agudath Jacob (Skokie, IL)
Jordan Hersh – Beth Sholom Congregation (Frederick, MD)
Jennifer Kaluzny – Temple Israel (West Bloomfield, MI)
Lindsay Kanter – Temple Emanuel (Kensington, MD)
Talia Kaplan – Congregation Beth Shalom (Overland Park, KS)
Georgette Kennebrae – Freelance Rabbi and Community Builder (Porto Santo, Portugal)
Todd Kipnis – Temple Shaaray Tefila (New York, NY)
Chaim Koritzinsky – Congregation Etz Chayim (Palo Alto, CA)
Judy Kummer – Freelance Lifecycle Officiant, Spiritual Care Counselor, Eldercare Programming (Boston, MA)
Sari Laufer – Stephen Wise Temple (Los Angeles, CA)
Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg – Shir Tikva (Minneapolis, MN)
Andrew Mandel – Central Synagogue (New York, NY)
Rachel Marks – Temple Beth Israel (Skokie, IL)
David Markus – Congregation Shir Ami (Greenwich, CT)
Oded Mazor – Kehilat Kol HaNeshama (Jerusalem, Israel)
Steven Nathan – Lehigh University Office of Jewish Student Life (Bethlehem, PA)
Amanda Nube – Chochmat HaLev (Berkeley, CA)
Sam Rosen – Congregation Beit Simchat Torah (New York, NY)
Benjamin Ross – Temple Shaaray Tefila (White Plains, NY)
Rachel Sabath Beit-Halachmi – Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation (Baltimore, MD)
Josh Schreiber – Congregation Agudath Achim (Taunton, MA)
Michael Schwab – North Suburban Synagogue Beth El (Highland Park, IL)
Philip Sherman – BJBE (Deerfield, IL)
Ariana Silverman – Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue (Detroit, MI)
Bradley Solmsen – Park Avenue Synagogue (New York, NY)
Danielle Stillman – Middlebury College (Middlebury, VT)
Marcia Tilchin – Jewish Collaborative of Orange County (Orange County, CA)
Naomi Weiss – Congregation Kol Shofar (Sausalito, CA)
Harriette Wimms – The JOC Mishpacha Project (Baltimore, MD)
Ariel Wolpe – Ma’alot (Atlanta, GA)
Lana Zilberman-Soloway – Congregation Or Ami (Westlake Village, CA)