Gently Welcoming Ourselves as We Are

Gently Welcoming Ourselves as We Are

Aug 15, 2023 | Blog, by Rebecca Schisler, Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

As we enter the month of Elul, we are invited to enter into a practice of cheshbon hanefesh, soul accounting. As we engage in this practice and reflect on the past year, we ask ourselves – Are our actions in alignment with our intentions? Are we awake to our lives?

Cheshbon hanefesh is part of a broader practice of teshuva, a returning to our essential nature, to who we really are. The month of Elul is enveloped in the power of love throughout this process of soul accounting and returning. We invite you to join Rebecca Schisler in a practice to help us soften and gently welcome ourselves fully as we are.

Looking with the Eyes of Our Hearts

Looking with the Eyes of Our Hearts

Aug 15, 2023 | Blog, by Rabbi Myriam Klotz, Senior Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

The first word of the Torah portion we read as Elul begins is “Look!”–”Re’eh!” Look, really see, that before you today, this day, is a blessing and a curse. Choose life!, we are told in this parasha (Torah portion). It is right here before you, in the life you are living now.

The core practice this month is to practice looking with the eyes of our hearts at what is before us and inside us, this life in its complexities and contradictions, its messiness and its authenticity.

Rabbi Alan Lew of blessed memory writes in This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared: “Pay attention to your life. Every moment in it is profoundly mixed. Every moment contains a blessing and a curse. Everything depends on our beholding our lives with clear eyes, seeing the potential blessing in each moment as well as the potential curse, choosing the former, forswearing the latter.”

Elul calls to us with daily shofar blasts to help us wake up, to hear and behold ourselves more clearly, to engage in the practice of cheshbon hanefesh–a spiritual accounting–in order to help us better discern how to make choices that are life-affirming blessings.

It’s not necessarily obvious how you and I are to do this work of looking deeply and open-heartedly into the life we have been living, or not living, this year, in order to choose the life-giving path of blessing going forward. Alan Lew suggests three practices to help us to see ourselves more clearly and with greater perspective: prayer, meditation, and/or, focusing on one thing.

Prayer:
Lew writes that “the Hebrew word for prayer is tefilah. The infinitive form of this verb is l’hitpalel-to pray-a reflexive form denoting action that one performs on oneself”, and in this way, it can be a way we come to know ourselves more deeply and clearly. For me, prayer is a need that my soul has. Just as my body has the need to drink in order to hydrate, the soul within has a need to pray for spiritual hydration, for being nourished by reaching inward and outward to the Ineffable Mystery by which I am born into each new moment. The practice of praying–liturgically or otherwise–can help you return to the Self of your self, to touch the deep core of your existence, and perhaps in that way to loosen the grips that shame, bias, doubt and the like might have upon you and enable you to get down to the work of teshuva that Elul is about.

Meditation:
During Elul, you can set an intention to devote time each day to rest in the quiet awareness of breath and sensation. You can choose a focal point for your attention, such as breath, or sound, or a visual anchor like a candle flame or a flower. Let yourself drop into the present moment, and pay attention to all that arises and passes in your awareness. Saturating your attention in the present moment of your life, Lew writes, can help you see yourself more clearly. Meditation can help you to “see that [you] are something larger than yourself. This is an essential aspect of Rosh HaShanah–seeing [yourself] as not just a discrete ego, but as part of a great flow of being.”

Focus on one thing:
Truth be told, for some of us, prayer and meditation may not be helpful tools; the resistance to engaging them is too great. Lew writes that many of us “will never get over finding the daily prayer service tedious and opaque. Many others will always either be frightened to death or bored to tears by the prospect of meditation.” For some of us who have experienced trauma (including religious trauma), prayer and meditation may for now harm more than help. The simple practice of focusing on one thing in your life may be a more helpful way to see your life more clearly.

You can choose to practice focusing on just one thing for this month of Elul. Lew suggests that you focus on one fundamental and simple aspect of your life, and “commit yourself to being totally conscious and honest about it for the thirty days of Elul”. Since everything we do is an expression of the entire truth of our lives, paying attention to one thing–like when we go to sleep, or eating, or how we engage on our cell phones through the day–we can begin to see our patterns, aversions, desires, and the like more clearly. Focusing on one thing in our life this month can help us see ourselves more clearly and help us wake up.

Lew writes, “So we can pray, we can meditate. Or we can simply choose one thing in our life and live that one small aspect in truth, and then watch in amazement as the larger truth of our life begins to emerge. The truth is, every moment of our life carries with it the possibility of a great blessing and a great curse, a blessing if we live in truth, a curse if we do not…All that’s required of you is to see what’s in front of your face and to choose the blessing in it.”

May you choose blessing in your life as this year begins to draw to a close, and may we together know the blessing of wise discernments and loving hearts.

When the Walls Crumble: A Teaching and Practice for Tisha B’Av

When the Walls Crumble: A Teaching and Practice for Tisha B’Av

Jul 12, 2023 | Blog, by Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, Senior Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Tisha B’Av is a day when we turn courageously to face the truth of the fragility, unpredictability, and groundlessness of our lives. You might wonder, then, what is required of us on this day? We invite you to dedicate a couple of moments to practice as we face the truth of impermanence, and discover an inner refuge that can help us to remain loving, calm, open hearted, and compassionate even in the midst of change and difficulty.

Practice: Holding our Broken Hearts with Love

Practice: Holding our Broken Hearts with Love

Jul 12, 2023 | Blog, by Rabbi Marc Margolius, Senior Core Faculty and Senior Advisor, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

As we enter the month of Av this week, our spiritual task in this period is to grow in awareness of the brokenness in ourselves, our people, and our world – to allow the walls of our own hearts to crack open, allowing ourselves to become vulnerable to pain.

The Hasidic master Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlov contended that rather than avoiding or shutting out that which is painful, we must truly face and enter into it (Likutei Moharan I, 65). “Sometimes, when people don’t want to suffer a little,” Rabbi Nachman taught, “they end up suffering a lot.” (Siach Sarfey Kodesh I, 6). 

Rabbi Nachman notes that when experiencing pain, our natural human reflex is to close our eyes, which enables us to avoid external distractions and witness more clearly the underlying interconnectedness of life, thereby transcending one’s finite selfhood. The poet Robert Frost expressed this succinctly: “The best way out is through” (a line from his poem “A Servant to Servants,” in North of Boston, 1914).

In “The Guest House,” the Sufi poet Rumi similarly advises us to set an intention to accept everything that arises as ultimately serving a role in a larger purpose, if we allow it to pass fully through our “system” and “do its work:”

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

In mindfulness practice, we observe aversion to unpleasant thoughts, feelings, and sensations – and welcome them all as honored “guests.” As we wake up, we see more clearly the option of holding our broken heart with tenderness, rather than fleeing from unpleasant or painful thoughts and feelings. In that moment, we are better able to choose to bear that which seemed unbearable, freeing the energy in our brokenness to flow towards healing and wholeness.

A simple meditation practice for entering the month of Av:

  • Pause and receive three deep breaths into your belly, allowing the breath to arise and fall away at its own pace, with as little effort as possible.
  • Place one (or both) hands over your heart-space.
  • Consider: 
    • What heartbreak is present for you right now, behind the inner walls protecting you from pain and grief?
  • Holding your heart tenderly, with love and support:
    • Can you lower the walls enough to allow the pain of your broken heart to be present and move through you? 
    • Can you feel the presence of others who similarly are holding their own heartbreak with compassion and tenderness?
  • Allow the pain and grief to move through you – to “check out” of your inner “guest house.”
  • Come back to the breath. Hold your heart with strength and love. 
  • Call to mind or whisper to yourself the words of Psalm 147:3:

 
הָרֹפֵא לִשְׁבוּרֵי לֵב וּמְחַבֵּשׁ לְעַצְּבוֹת
HaRofeh Lish’vurei Lev, um’chbesh l’atzvotam
God heals the broken-hearted, and binds up their wounds

Remembering Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man (z’l)

Remembering Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man (z’l)

May 11, 2023 | Blog, by Rabbi Nancy Flam, Founding Teacher, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

We mourn the loss of our dear friend and teacher, Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man, who died earlier this month.

We honor Jonathan as a key founder and founding faculty member of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. However, before reflecting on his role with the Institute, please know this:

“For 26 years Jonathan lived in Israel, where he worked as a farmer, until he contracted polio, and subsequently embarked on a career in publishing. He served as deputy chief editor of the Israel Program for Scientific Translations, revising editor at the Encyclopedia Judaica, chief editor of Israel Universities Press, and editor of the Shefa Quarterly. In 1981 he moved to Los Angeles, where he founded Metivta: a center for contemplative Judaism, an academy dedicated to the renewal of the Jewish wisdom tradition and to the deepening of personal religious quest.

He has lectured at universities, colleges, seminaries and monasteries throughout the United States. His publications include numerous essays, some short fiction and verse. In 1990 he visited the Dalai Lama in India, a journey that was described in Rodger Kamenetz’ The Jew in the Lotus.”

Jonathan was a true contemplative and a bold pioneer. When he came to Los Angeles, after years of exploring Jewish mystical texts and practices himself, he made outreach to disaffected young Jews on college campuses, many of whom were exploring Eastern traditions, and showed them authentic Jewish paths to meditation and the inner life. But in addition to outreach, he also was dedicated to in-reach. Judaism, he felt, needed to grow. When he founded Metivta, he told me in his wonderfully wry way, he hoped his efforts would “help make Judaism safe for contemplatives.” I remember one story he told about a meeting he had with Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, explaining to him in a dejected manner that he felt he was failing as a Jewish renewal person; try as he might, he just couldn’t get into all the singing and extroverted emotion. Reb Zalman took his hand, looked him in the eye and said, “Oh Jonathan! You have it all wrong. You’re not a failed ecstatic; you’re a brilliantly successful contemplative.” Relating that story made Jonathan’s bright eyes twinkle yet more brightly.

I met Jonathan in the mid ‘90s through Rabbi Rachel Cowan, who was supporting Jonathan’s work through the Nathan Cummings Foundation (of which Rachel was the Jewish Life Program Officer). Jonathan had a dream to take the mission of Metivta to a national stage. The three of us began talking. And then Rachel invited us, along with Arthur Green, Sheila Weinberg, Larry Kushner, and Charlie Halpern to meet at the Nathan Cummings Foundation office on November 5, 1996 for a day-long brainstorming session. That was the beginning of what eventually became a new national project, incubated at Metivta, called, “The Spirituality Institute at Metivta.” We ran our first rabbinic cohort retreat program under Metivta’s auspices, where Jonathan was one of the three founding teachers (along with Arthur Green and Sylvia Boorstein). We grew the project at Metivta for several years, before becoming incorporated as our own 501(c)(3): The Institute for Jewish Spirituality.

Jonathan was very proud of what became The Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and happy with the role he played in setting it all in motion. He blessed us all with his brilliant vision, humor, honesty and humility. May his soul be bound up in the bonds of eternal life.

For those who would like a taste of Jonathan’s unique wit and sensibility, here is one of his wonderful poems:

fabian rappaport´s other dinner party

his problem with praying he began to explain
but they silenced him
with guffaws and insolent scoffing
no they said
tell us first why you don´t eat
pork or prawns or lobsters or shrimps
or german blood sausage and do you really think
god hates people who eat oysters and frogs´ legs
and creamy beef stroganoff
no they said
tell us first about the origin of evil
about who made hitler and pol pot
and were there quarks in the garden
of eden
my problem with praying he tried once again
but still they scoffed
my problem with praying
he finally shouted
is that there is too much noise
everywhere

Jonathan Omer-Man ©

A Conversation with Rabbi Michael Strassfeld

A Conversation with Rabbi Michael Strassfeld

Mar 10, 2023 | Blog

We are grateful to Best-Selling Author, Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, for speaking with IJS President & CEO, Rabbi Josh Feigelson! Please enjoy the conversation recording below.

Rabbi Michael Strassfeld is one of the editors of the Jewish Catalog (1973), a guide to do-it-yourself Judaism that sold over 300,000 copies. He edited the Second and Third Jewish Catalogs (1975,1979), authored The Jewish Holidays (1985), co-authored A Night of Questions: A Passover Haggadah (1999) with his wife Rabbi Joy Levitt, and authored A Book of Life: Embracing Judaism as a Spiritual Practice (2002). His new book Judaism Disrupted: A Spiritual Manifesto for the 21st Century is published by Ben Yehuda Press. He edits a free weekly newsletter about Judaism (subscribe at michaelstrassfeld.com).