Josh in Conversation with Joshua Leifer

Josh in Conversation with Joshua Leifer

Dec 12, 2024 | Blog

We are grateful to Joshua Leifer for sharing his insights with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.

Joshua Leifer is a journalist, editor, and translator. His essays and reporting have appeared widely in international publications, including The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Haaretz, The

Nation, and elsewhere. A member of the Dissent editorial board, he previously worked as an editor at Jewish Currents and at +972 Magazine. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Yale University, where he studies the history of modern moral and social thought.

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At Home in the Darkness

At Home in the Darkness

Dec 10, 2024 | Blog, by Rabbi Miriam Margles, Senior Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

At this time of year, where I live in Toronto, the trees have shed almost all of their leaves and their branches stand bare against the grey sky. Day by day, the hours of sunlight shorten while darkness holds on longer to the mornings and rolls in earlier and earlier in the evenings. Overhead, skeins of Canada geese honk their way south, and I almost take their leaving personally, abandoning me along with the snow and cold. With the loss of light and warmth, I find myself habitually focused on what I am losing, fighting against the changing season and its natural impact on me. When I face these outer and inner changes unmindfully, I fall into habits of either pushing myself to resist rest, forcing myself to be busy and social, or collapsing into fatigue as thoughts of loneliness and lack curl in next to me on the couch. 

To respond to the depletion and sense of lack that many of us feel at this time of year, there are abundant Jewish teachings for Chanukah and the whole Hebrew month of Kislev about bringing light into the darkness. But I want to invite us to linger in this month’s long nights, to explore making ourselves spiritually at home in the darkness and to learn from its gifts. 

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the great Hasidic sage of the late 18th century, teaches that the medicine for this season is a practice of sighing. He quotes the famous verse from Zekhariah (4:6), from the Haftarah we read on the Shabbat of Chanukah -“Not by might and not by power, ki im be’ruchi – but only by My ruach (spirit/ wind/ breath)”. The repair for what is lacking cannot be found through force or fighting. Instead, we consciously, gently, engage with ruach. 

Rebbe Nachman explains that because everything that exists has come into being through Divine ruach, vital lifebreath, and because the secret of renewal lives in that same enlivening ruach, when there is lack, it is because there is a lack of ruach. Healing, therefore, needs an infusion of flowing, vitalizing ruach. While the winter earth becomes dormant and many animals hibernate, drawing their ruach inward until they are renewed in the spring, we humans, teaches Rebbe Nachman, can meet the lack or depletion of ruach within us with a conscious and soft flow of breath.

He teaches:

“See how precious is the sigh and groan {the krekhtz } of a Jewish person. It provides wholeness [in place] of the lack…And sighing is the extension of the breath. It corresponds to erekh apayim (patience)—i.e., extended ruach. Therefore, when a person sighs over the lack and extends their ruach, they draw ruach-of-life to that which they are lacking… Therefore, through the sigh, the lack is made whole” (Likutei Moharan, Torah 8:1).

We might think that the practice that is called for in response to the lack of light and lows of this season would be to generate strong and powerful breath, bracing against the cold, or quick and activating breath to overcome the darkness and our impulses to collapse under the covers. But the quality of ruach that we nurture in the month of Kislev, preparing for Chanukah, needs to be distinct – different from the fresh aliveness of spring or the luscious vitality of summer. For this time of year, Rebbe Nachman prescribes long, extended ruach-of-life breaths that share the qualities of the darkness outside – slow, heavy, spilling and spacious with soft and blurred boundaries. Between the poles of fighting and collapsing, we access this clear and gentle ruach-aliveness. 

Let yourself sigh a few times. Notice what the release feels like in your body. Feel how air tumbles out of your body, uncontrolled, unmeasured. The chest softens and falls, in and down. With the palms of your hands resting heavily against your chest, a sigh can partner with gravity to move stagnant ruach out of your body. Sighing is assisted by an open mouth and open throat so the fluff and flow of breath can pour out, unhindered. 

And of course, each sigh is fed by the inhalation that fills the body before and after it. The deeper and fuller the inhalation, the more fluid and restorative the sigh can become. Instead of pulling the next breath in, you can allow your belly to expand softly, patiently, allowing fresh air to fill and expand your lungs, to widen your ribcage, to let your mouth fall open, expanding from the inside out, becoming more available to release the next sigh. As you continue this sighing practice (and as some yawning might unfurl with the same qualities of soft expansion, quieting and release), you might notice a gentle increase of energy that is restful and warm but not sleepy or forced. 

You can let your vocal cords vibrate so that some sound rides on the flow of breath, just enough to give voice to what is felt within – sadness or ache, relief or pleasure. Rather than opening into big emotional catharsis, this is a practice of permission and presence so that feeling can move through us, supported and comforted by the movement of air through our whole bodies. With each holy sigh, ruach and emotion roll from the dark cave within to the darkness that surrounds. And from the darkness outside, enlivening ruach expands and fills the dark and wondrous galaxies within. Tehom el tehom koreh – Deep calls to deep (Psalm 42:8).  

Just as the small, flickering Chanukah candles enable us to be present with the stretch of night outside our windows, the practice of sighing embodies spiritual wisdom gleaned from the darkness. It doesn’t alter the weather or the slant of the sun but it fosters a sense of wholeness within us, breath by divine breath, so that we are increasingly at home in the darkness, lacking nothing.

Extracting the Hidden Light

Extracting the Hidden Light

Dec 10, 2024 | Blog, by Rabbi Marc Margolius, Senior Core Faculty and Senior Advisor, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

As we enter the darkest season of the year, Jewish tradition teaches of the or haganuz, a hidden light revealed through presence and righteous acts. Legend says 36 hidden righteous ones—the Lamed Vavnikim—sustain the world. This Hanukkah, as we light 36 candles, we’re called to embody their spirit, revealing the light within ourselves and the world.

A Quiet Mind (Chayei Sarah 5785)

A Quiet Mind (Chayei Sarah 5785)

Nov 21, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Many years ago, when my oldest son (now 21) was little, he asked for me to read him stories from a children’s bible on our shelf. It had belonged to my wife as a kid, and I was excited that Jonah wanted to hear these stories.
 
But of course it got complicated, because these stories are not, in fact, children’s stories for the most part. They talk about some pretty adult topics.
 
I particularly remember when we got to the Binding of Isaac. I was worried–talk about a story not made for children. How is he going to respond here? Do I need to do some on-the-fly editing? I read with some trepidation. And then I arrived at, “And Abraham took the knife and lifted up his hand,” and Jonah interrupted: “Whoa, whoa, whoa!”
 
“Here it is,” I thought. “I’m about to traumatize my child, and he’s picking up on it” (yes, I noted the irony). I stopped reading and turned to him.
 
“Yes?”
 
“Where did he get the knife?” (N.B. Evidently this wasn’t a straight translation, as the knife is mentioned in the Torah in verse 6.)
 
My mind had spun out a whole story about this interaction, a big set of assumptions. But it turned out that Jonah’s question wasn’t my question, and the problems he had weren’t my problems. Imagine that.
 
We find an incredible contrast like this in Parashat Chayei Sarah (Genesis 23:1-25:18). Abraham sends his servant to find a wife for Isaac–and we learn that the servant is a wordy fellow. A good deal of the Torah portion is taken up with recounting his private dialogue with God and then telling the story of his encounter with Rebecca–including all his concerns: How will I know she’s the one? What if she doesn’t want to come? What if I fail in this mission? Understandably, his mind seems rather unsettled right now.
 
And yet when the time comes and Rebecca’s family asks her, Do you want to completely change your life and go off to a foreign land and marry Isaac–who you’ve never even laid eyes on, she answers with a single word: Elekh, I’ll go (Gen. 24:58). Whatever her concerns may have been, the story conveys a sense that Rebecca’s mind, in contrast to Abraham’s servant, was calm. Her elekh is a kinetic translation of hineni–Here I am.
 
People often ask me, Do you think meditation is a countercultural thing in Jewish life? Honestly, yes. Why? Because we are such a wordy people. We love–and I mean love–language. We love studying through language, praying through language, playing with language. We even espouse the belief that the Creator brought the world into being through language: “And God said, ‘Let there be light.'” Jews are a people not only of the book, but of the word and the letter–of story, of law, of academic study and publication. Jews love words–and thank God for that!
 
Yet like so many things, this extraordinary feature of Jewish life can present a shadow side: we can become caught in our stories, trapped in our words, subsumed by our worries. We can develop an understanding that the primary or perhaps only way to respond to life is developing language around it–in our own heads, in conversation, in law or policy.
 
We know there are alternatives, though. There are other models of being in our minds–including the way of mindfulness meditation, an aim of which is to calm the discursive mind: that part of our mind that lives in language, that is always evaluating, judging, planning, worrying, spinning stories about the past or future. We seek to quiet it down, to practice hashkatah, quieting, as the Piacezner Rebbe put it. We try to cultivate another way of thinking, a different kind of thought–not spinning up or out, not constantly thinking new thoughts, but slower, calmer, more spacious. And that makes the kind of quiet and silence we practice in meditation still a rather counter cultural thing in Jewish life.
 
Yet the roots of this kind of approach to mind and language are deep in Jewish life. We can find them (irony, again) in our texts–“Better few words with intention than many without,” as the Shulchan Arukh says–and in our many practices and traditions that focus primarily not on words in the mind but actions of the body and feelings of the heart. And  we can find them in our knowledge of people–friends, family, neighbors, ancestors–who embody and exemplify a life of quiet presence and spacious wisdom.
 
Rebecca, with her simple elekh, “I’ll go,” is one of those ancestors–as is Isaac, who goes out, simply it would seem, to pray in the field (Gen. 24:63). And in a time when we are surrounded with a surfeit of language inside our heads and out, we might tap into the strength of the spiritual inheritance of quiet they leave us.
Josh in Conversation with Rabbi Adina Allen

Josh in Conversation with Rabbi Adina Allen

Nov 15, 2024 | Blog

We are grateful to Rabbi Adina Allen for sharing her insights with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.

Rabbi Adina Allen is a spiritual leader, author, and educator who grew up in an art studio where she learned firsthand the power of creativity for connecting to self and to the Sacred. She is cofounder and creative director of Jewish Studio Project (JSP), an organization that is seeding a future in which every person is connected to their creativity as a force for healing, liberation and social transformation. Adina’s first book, The Place of All Possibility: Cultivating Creativity Through Ancient Jewish Wisdom, was published in July 2024 (Ayin Press). She is also a national media contributor, popular speaker, and workshop leader, and her writing can be found in scholarly as well as mainstream publications. Based on the work of her mother, renowned art therapist Pat B. Allen, Adina developed the Jewish Studio Process, a methodology for unlocking creativity, which she has brought to thousands of activists, educators, artists, and clergy across the country. Adina was ordained by Hebrew College in 2014 where she was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. Adina is the recipient of the Covenant Foundation’s 2018 Pomegranate Prize for emerging educational leaders. She and her family live in Berkeley, California.

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Responding to the Anxiety of Now: Vayera 5785

Responding to the Anxiety of Now: Vayera 5785

Nov 14, 2024 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

I was riding in a Lyft at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, en route to LAX to make a flight home in time for my son’s 12th birthday party. My driver, a middle-aged African-American woman, asked me where I was headed. “Chicago.” 
 
“Chicago?! Take me with you! That’s where I’m from.”
 
“Oh, where in Chicago did you grow up?”
 
She proceeded to name what felt like 25 different neighborhoods: First she lived in Evergreen Park, then in Bronzeville, then in Rogers Park, then PIlsen, then another, and another, and another. It felt a little like the passage in the Torah that describes the 42 different places the Israelites encamped. I got the sense that she had experienced a lot of insecurity in her life.
 
I told her I was glad to have traveled to Los Angeles right after the election. It was a welcome change of scenery after the tension and divisiveness of the campaign.
 
“You know, I really don’t pay attention to politics,” she said. “I don’t vote. And you know why? Because I have panic attacks. I have so much stress and anxiety, and I just need to try and stay calm and focused so I can pay my bills. It’s a real struggle for me to stay calm–and all that election stuff doesn’t help.”
 
The conversation has lingered with me all week as I’ve talked with many others about the outcome of the election and how we’re each responding. Most of the people I interact with at work and in life are college-educated American Jews, and most of them are high-information voters. Many folks volunteered on campaigns, many donated money, and virtually all voted and paid attention to the election cycle. This lovely person who was my driver in the wee hours of Sunday morning lives a very different life.
 
What I was most struck by was how she described struggling with anxiety and depression–because that’s something it seems we all share. So many people in my life suffer in a similar way. For so many people, across socio-economic strata, our minds, our hearts, and our bodies are overwhelmed by the weight of the world. Yet, for many of the people I know, that anxiety gets channelled into even more compulsive engagement in the news–which is, perhaps, a sign of their relative privilege of not worrying quite as much about paying their bills on a month-to-month basis. I imagine there are many other lessons and explanations.
 
One of the people who suffers the most in Parashat Vayera (Genesis 18:1-22:24) is Hagar, Sarah’s handmaiden who is the mother of Ishmael. While Sarah originally had encouraged Abraham to have a child with Hagar, her mood changed almost immediately–and in this week’s Torah portion, now with a child of her own, she demands that Abraham kick Hagar out of the house. Hagar and her son find themselves dying of thirst in the wilderness, and Hagar, understandably, can’t bear to watch her son suffer. 
 
It’s at this moment that an angel calls out to Hagar and tells her that God has heard her son’s cry, ba’asher hu sham. It’s difficult to translate this phrase, but it suggests something like, “exactly where and how he is right now.” Rashi, following the Midrash, says it means that God hears and judges Ishamel exactly as he is in this moment–without consideration for what he may become in the future. And right now, he is a crying, suffering child.
 
Mindfulness practice teaches us to try to quiet the mind in order to be present with the truth we’re experiencing in this moment–not to become caught in the stories our minds can spin about what might be. That is, our practice encourages and guides us to listen to ourselves and others ba’asher hu sham–exactly as we are in this moment, not what we could be in the future. That’s not to say we shouldn’t be wise and discerning about what may come, or that we shouldn’t plan for the future. It’s rather to say that we should practice grounding ourselves in the truth of our experience right now, and from that grounded place try to make good judgments.
 
I think that’s an enormous struggle for many of us in the world we live in. For some of us, the constant overwhelm of media, the firehose of political news, the ongoing challenges in the Middle East–it can generate a state of anxiety about the world and what we take to be true. For others, like my Lyft driver, forces like economic precariousness and constant moving about might leave us without a sense of ground, an ability to feel really at home in our lives.
 
The invitation of our practice is to give ourselves the gift of acknowledging where we are, ba’asher hu sham–in this moment, in this time, in this place, in this body. When we do so, we have the opportunity to sense firmer ground beneath our feet, greater support amid the turbulent seas of life, water to drink amidst what can feel like a parched desert.