Tuesday, August 18 – Sunday, August 23, 2025
Trinity Retreat Center
West Cornwall, CT
In beautiful West Cornwall, CT, we will hold a multi-day retreat specifically designed for young adults! This program invites you to slow down, connect with yourself and others, and drop into what matters most. Amidst the challenges of daily life and the tumultuous challenges in the world around us, this is an opportunity for deep renewal, healing and transformation.
Utilizing the gifts of mindfulness, embodiment, song, prayer, and a variety of Jewish spiritual teachings, you will:
- Learn tools and practices to reconnect with your innate wisdom and authenticity.
- Nurture your capacity for resilience, compassion, and well-being.
- Cultivate insight and wise action in response to the challenges of our world.
- Refresh and renew your body, heart, mind, and soul.
All folks under 40 are welcome. No experience with mindfulness and/or Judaism is necessary. This retreat will be held mostly in social silence, except for opening and closing meals, Q&A, communal prayer, and one-on-one sessions with instructors.
Save the Date: August 18 – 23
Please submit your name and email address and we will inform you once registration opens.
Retreat Faculty
Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife
Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife (she/they) sprinkles sparkles, disrupts expectations, and offers blessings wherever she goes. She serves as Founding Kohenet of Kesher Pittsburgh and is a Core Faculty Member with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality; she also enjoys working with Jewish Studio Project and Kirva among other national Jewish organisations. Additionally, she delights in serving as a facilitator, teacher, life spiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, shlichat tzibbur, liturgist and songstress. Her work in these realms is informed by her lived experience as a queer, bi-racial, child-free Jewish person living with chronic illness, her belief that Book, Body and Earth are equal sources of wisdom, the quandaries she has encountered as a scholar of the Orphan Wisdom School, and her deep commitment to a thriving, liberatory Jewish future. Keshira received Kohenet smicha in 2017 and earned her BS (2000) and MS (2001) at Carnegie Mellon University. Though both the lands of the Osage & Haudenosaunee people (aka Pittsburgh, PA) and the Gadigal people (Sydney, AUS) feel like home, Keshira and her beloved have been in an extended period of travel since January 2023.
Jes Golden
Jes Golden (they/she—formerly Jes Heppler) is a meditation teacher and researcher who focuses on embodied experience in Jewish and Buddhist meditation. Grounded in their Sephardi and Ashkenazi lineages, Jes’ teaching weaves Jewish and earth-based spirituality with philosophical and neuroscientific insights. Jes teaches regularly for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS): they host the IJS LGBTQ+ Monthly Sit, guide the IJS Daily Sit, and lead both online and in-person programming for the IJS young adult community, Shevet. Jes has also taught for Or HaLev’s Ground & Center series. They are a graduate of Or HaLev and IJS’s Meditation Teacher Training Program. Jes holds a PhD in Philosophy from UC Berkeley and is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Possible Minds at Indiana University, where they are researching bodily awareness in Buddhist and Jewish meditation.
Rebecca Schisler
Rebecca Schisler (she/her) is a meditation teacher, artist, and Jewish educator. A devoted contemplative practitioner, she has led groups and taught classes and retreats with Or HaLev, Awakened Heart Project, Orot, Wilderness Torah, Pardes, and Stanford School of Medicine. She was previously the Director of Student Health & Well-being at Stanford University’s Hillel, and co-authored the Mahloket Matters Schools Curriculum with the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators. A student rabbi 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, holistic, and accessible path, with relevant and timely wisdom for all.
Yael Shy
Yael Shy (she/her) is the Founder and CEO of Sefira Wellness where she supports individuals and collectives uncover their inherent worth and capacity for deep joy. She is the author of the award-winning book, What Now? Meditation for Your Twenties and Beyond (Parallax, 2017), and the forthcoming book, tentatively titled, Get Your Hopes Up: The Power of Desire to Ease Your Anxiety and Unleash Your Joy (Diversion Books, 2027). Yael was the founder and former Senior Director of Mindful NYU, the largest campus-based mindfulness initiative in the country, and is currently Adjunct Faculty at New York University and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.
