The Peaceful Parent Project® with Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning

Nov 20, 2025

The Peaceful Parent Project® with Orot:

Center for New Jewish Learning

January – February, 2026

6 Live Zoom Sessions

This is your opportunity to take a course with IJS and Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning. These programs (with separate cohorts for parents and grandparents) integrate Jewish text study, discussion, and guided mindfulness practice to nourish families during challenging times and help you bring more compassion and Jewish wisdom into your home. Parents will learn to reshape interactions with children, creating a more spiritually connected and mindful bond. Grandparents will learn practices to deepen connections with adult children and grandchildren and infuse family moments with sacredness and tranquility.

Meet Your Instructor:

Rebecca Minkus Lieberman

Bio

Sitting with the Sefirot: A Kabbalistic Journey for Deepening Your Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Practice

Nov 20, 2025

Sitting with the Sefirot:

Sitting with the Sefirot: A Kabbalistic Journey for Deepening Your Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Practice

February 9 – May 31, 2026

17 Sessions, Live on Zoom

Click Here to Register

This course will help you take your daily meditation practice to the next level through the Kabbalah’s mystical sefirot—lenses to help us channel, focus, and reveal the sublime light of our own Divine nature. The Kabbalah’s mystical sefirot provide a systematic structure and spiritual framework for deepening our meditation practice skills and cultivating virtue, all while connecting to Jewish wisdom.

We will explore each of the seven lower sefirot as a foundation to:

• Expand your capacity to feel and extend love

• Strengthen your discipline in practice

• Develop greater attentional balance

• Stabilize your meditative concentration

• Cultivate devekut, connection with the Divine

• Shift into nondual awareness

• Take your practice into your daily life

Meet Your Instructor:

Rabbi Sam Feinsmith

As Senior Core Faculty at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality Sam directs the IJS Clergy Leadership Program and serves on the faculty of Gates of Awareness, a training program for aspiring teachers of Jewish mindfulness meditation. He is one of two lead teachers for our online course on the fundamentals of Jewish mindfulness meditation, The Gift of Awareness, and has written the IJS year-long Hasidic text study offering for a number of years running. After close to fifteen years teaching contemplative practices grounded in mindfulness to teens and educators, Sam originally came on board at IJS to develop and direct the Educating for a Jewish Spiritual Life Program, which brought these practices to hundreds of Jewish day- and religious-school educators and their students.

Mindful Jewish Leadership in the Face of Antisemitism: Trauma-Informed Practice for Healing and Wise Response

Nov 12, 2025

Mindful Jewish Leadership in the Face of Antisemitism:

Trauma-Informed Practice for Healing and Wise Response

A program for Jewish Clergy and Professionals

February 4 – March 25, 2026

Eight online sessions on Wednesdays

Opening Retreat: Wednesday February 4, 2:00pm-5:00pm ET

Weekly Live Sessions: Wednesdays, February 11- March 18, 3:30pm-5:00pm ET

Closing Retreat: Wednesday, March 25, 2:00pm-5:00pm ET

As Jewish leaders, how do we respond mindfully to the corrosive impact of anti-Jewish contempt, bigotry, and bias during these challenging times, attending to our own wounds while discerning wise action and healing our communities?

Click Here to Register

The experience of being a Jew in the world has radically altered since October 7, 2023. The demands on Jewish leaders have been overwhelming – to be sources of stability and comfort, moral guidance, public voice, leaders in community organizing, conflict resolution, and intergenerational healing. While supporting our communities, few Jewish leaders have had the support or space to process our own grief, anger, fear, betrayal, and moral anguish.

Many leaders express feeling exhausted, isolated, and ill-equipped to address the complex challenges we face – including surging antisemitism in North America and around the world. There is a deep and unmet need to understand and heal the corrosive impact of present-day antisemitism and intergenerational Jewish trauma on our minds, hearts, and souls, and on the Jewish people as a whole.

Now more than ever, it’s essential that Jewish leaders cultivate mindful, spiritually grounded, and agile leadership.

Join us for an innovative program to support you in responding to the complexities with greater wisdom and clarity. Instead of living in perpetual alarm, defensiveness, numbness, or reactivity, you can learn to settle your nervous system, nurture inner stability and self-awareness, surface curiosity, and find grounding in Jewish sources of strength, connection and resilience.

The course will begin and end with 3-hour retreats for immersive practice, learning and building relationships. The closing retreat will focus on empowering participants to model and teach these tools and approaches in our various communities.

Now more than ever, it’s essential to cultivate mindful, spiritually grounded, agile, and effective leadership.

Jewish leaders and communities can learn the concepts and practices to access greater wisdom, agility and compassion to respond mindfully while rooted in our values.

Trauma-Informed Holistic Approach

In this unique program integrating theory and practice, you will explore:

The Dynamics of Anti-Jewish Oppression

- Understand the culturally pervasive dynamics of anti-Jewish oppression in the context of other systemic oppressions.

The Dynamics of Ancestral Jewish Trauma

- Understand the dynamics of internalized ancestral Jewish trauma and vicarious trauma.
- Identify how intergenerational wounds and survival strategies are at play within us and those we serve.
- Recognize and soothe Jewish anxiety habits related to safety, worth, and belonging.

Share your struggles, questions, and uncertainties in a cohort of trusted colleagues.

Mindfulness-Based Practices for Self-Awareness & Emotional Regulation

- Pause from the urgency, overwhelm, and isolation of needing to constantly respond, strategize, solve, and support.
- Learn how our brains and bodies respond to the specific triggers of antisemitic rhetoric and behavior.
- Strengthen nervous system regulation; develop greater capacity to be present with and metabolize intense and difficult emotions rather than react or blow our pain onto others;

Jewish Spiritual Practice

- Explore Jewish wisdom, mindfulness-based Jewish spiritual practice to cultivate inner stability, vitality and spiritual grounding; deepen the middot (Jewish spiritual qualities) of clear perception, equanimity, curiosity, compassion, and resilience.
- Engage in contemplative prayer and song, ritual, and spiritual wisdom from a range of Jewish sources to draw on the inheritance of ancestral Jewish strength, creativity, joy, moral courage, love, and community.
- Explore ways to integrate insights and practices into our communities.

Trauma-Informed Holistic Approach

Participants in the pilot for this program (run in Winter 2024) had this to say:

“It gave me a chance to be sad for myself and grieve. That is a rare thing: our community encourages us to be advocates. Hearing the texture of everyone else’s hard time gave me the space to describe my own experience. It was a gift to be able to be witnessed by this group.“

2024 Pilot Program Participant

“It was significant seeing how responses to antisemitism from within Jewish community create real stress and challenge. No matter what we do, we’re upsetting people. It’s very fraught and leaders need support to be wise and grounded and not reactive.”

2024 Pilot Program Participant

“I was self-aware enough to see it happening— I know about my lack of resilience, feeling weathered, how I anticipate conflicts, and stew about what I would say. But now I have tools to manage myself. The workshop has given me an offramp and it’s worked. Rather than dwelling on a negative confrontation, I am spending less time stewing.”

2024 Pilot Program Participant

Register Now

IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

Abundance Level

$349

Register

Basic Level

$249

Register

Reduced Level

$149

Register

Meet Your Instructors:

Rabbi Miriam Margles

Miriam has a long and rich association with IJS, having taught on various retreats and programs over the years. She joins the Institute as a Senior Core Faculty after over a decade as the rabbi of the Danforth Jewish Circle in Toronto. Her career has included service as a founding faculty member at the Romemu Yeshiva, serving as a fellow with the Rising Song Institute, co-founding Encounter – the award-winning educational program working toward informed, courageous and resilient Jewish leadership on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and recording her original Jewish music with the Hadar Rising Song ensemble. Miriam’s album, Zeh HaYom – this is the day, is available at: https://miriammargles.bandcamp.com/

Caryn Aviv

Rabbi Caryn Aviv serves as Rabbinic director at Judaism Your Way in Denver, CO. She’s a recovering academic in sociology and Jewish studies, and (mostly) formerly anxious Jew. She creates spaces, rituals, and practices that offer safety, healing, equity, compassion and justice for Jews, our loved ones, friends, and allies. Caryn recently published Unlearning Jewish Anxiety: How to Live with More Joy and Suffer Less (Monkfish, 2026).

Wise Aging Through Jewish Mindfulness

Nov 3, 2025

Wise Aging Through Jewish Mindfulness

February 12 – March 26, 2026

6 Live Zoom Sessions

Thursdays, 4:00-5:15pm ET | Feb 12, 19, 26, March 5, 12, 26

Click Here to Register

How can Jewish mindfulness help us extract and expand the wisdom of the latter stages of our lives? Based on Wise Aging, the now-classic book by Rabbi Rachel Cowan and Linda Thal, this six-week program will immerse participants in a community of ongoing mindfulness practice, reflection, and connection. Together, we’ll explore how meditation and mindfulness can help us meet physical and emotional challenges, learn to grow in acceptance of ourselves and others, deepen our friendships and familial relationships, live with greater joy, gratitude, and resilience, and shape a legacy for the future.

Learn how Jewish mindfulness practice can help you embrace aging as a spiritual practice, enabling you to access your deepest wisdom.

Learn tools and practices for exploring – and celebrating – the latter stage of our lives.
Connect deeply with others on the same trajectory.
Nurture your capacity to counter the “declinist” view of aging – the ageism that pervades society and which we too often internalize.
Cultivate equanimity about the aging process.
Clarify your understanding of your essential, most authentic self.
Develop your capacity simply to be, rather than to seek meaning only in productivity and accomplishment.
Identify those aspects of your life and identity which no longer serve you
Strengthen your ability to release these to the past.
Celebrate and Share the wisdom which you have developed over a lifetime.

Reserve Your Spot

Components of the Course

Week 1: Obstacle Ahead: The Declinist View of Aging

Week 2: Approaching Aging with Curiosity

Week 3: Rediscovering Your Authentic Self

Week 4: Integrating Shabbat Consciousness: Being, Not Doing

Week 5: Releasing That Which We No Longer Need

Week 6: Celebrating our Lives, and Next Steps

Register Now

IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

Abundance Level

$399

Register

Basic Level

$299

Register

Reduced Level

$199

Register

Meet Your Instructors:

Rabbi Marc Margolius

Rabbi Marc Margolius is a Senior Core Faculty member at IJS and serves as advisor for overall programming for IJS. He directs programming for lay leaders and Hevraya, the alumni of our Clergy Leadership Program. He hosts the “Daily Sit,” IJS’s online daily mindfulness meditation sessions, and teaches several courses, including Awareness in Action: Cultivating Character through Mindfulness and Middot, our online program in tikkun middot practice, integrating Jewish mindfulness with attention to core middot, character traits.

Previously, Marc served as rabbi at West End Synagogue in Manhattan and Congregation Beth Am Israel in Penn Valley, PA, where he pioneered a Shabbat-centered model of congregational engagement.

Karen Frank

Karen Frank has been a congregational nurse to several synagogues in New Jersey and a facilitator for Wise Aging since the early 2000s. Additionally, she, Rabbi Rachel Cowan z”l, and Dr. Linda Thal trained over 600 facilitators for the Wise Aging program nationally. She ardently believes that participating in the program encourages equanimity, mindfulness, and contentment in the aging process. Her work as a pastoral care nurse, Wise Aging facilitator, meditator, and Jewish Spiritual Director meld beautifully to assist people in aging, confronting disease, and coping with the challenges of our time.

Karen holds degrees in psychology, nursing, and certification in Jewish Spiritual Direction. She lives in Denville, NJ, is widowed, and is the mother of four adults.

Falling in Love with the World Again: Finding Our Way When Everything Feels Broken

Nov 3, 2025

Falling in Love with the World Again:

Finding Our Way When Everything Feels Broken

February 26 – March 26, 2026

Live Session Dates | Feb 26, March 5, 12, 19, 26

Thursdays, 7:30-8:45

Click Here to Register

Meet the onslaught of the world's crises with courage, calm, and even joy.

It is easy to feel helpless, angry, and overwhelmed with the enormous amount of news that provokes fear and uncertainty. The many emotions we feel about climate disasters, authoritarianism, violence, and the relentless news cycle can be deeply uncomfortable. But when we let them in, they also can be energizing, connecting, and even reorient us to our own strength and purpose.

Reserve Your Spot

Join us for a five-week program with Anya Kamenetz, an award-winning author, former NPR reporter, and expert on climate change and mental health, to examine our collective emotional responses to the crises of our time and learn to find inspiration even in the depths of despair.

In conversation and in practice, Anya will take us on a journey that explores our emotions with curiosity – building resilience and working with the energy within our bodies. Together, we will:

Map our collective pain for the world: identifying the spiral and the wheel
Discover the healing alchemy: transforming your grief, rage, apathy, fear and despair
Call In your resources and refuges: exploring body and breath, relationship and community, nature and the sacred, ancestral mentors and deep time
Practice each week: grounding ourselves in guided meditation, creative exercises in movement, art and writing, and group work
Study the wisdom: tuning into prophets, rabbis, lamas, mystics, Indigenous sages, neuroscientists, ecologists, and activists.

Reserve Your Spot

Testimonials

“I wanted to say a deep, profound thank you…for the talk you gave at New York Insight on The Wheel of Climate Emotions….

I almost backed out of attending the talk — it all felt so overwhelming to even try to hold. But I am so very glad that I was able to come and gain an entirely different perspective on experiencing and appreciating the variety of feelings I move through regarding climate change.

I have been putting so much of what you shared into reflection, practice, and meditation, and I just cannot say how incredibly grateful I am to you [and Jay] for helping to open up my eyes.”

“I supported your work because I need guidance on how to do The Work. I do not want to be lost in despair or overcome by fury. Instead I want to turn grief and anger into action so that we all have a joyful future to look towards. Looking forward to continuing to read and DO. Thanks, Anya <3”

Register Now

IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

Abundance Level

$299

Register

Basic Level

$199

Register

Reduced Level

$99

Register

Meet Your Instructor:

Anya Kamenetz

Anya Kamenetz speaks, writes, and thinks about thriving and caring for others on a rapidly changing planet. Her newsletter on these topics is The Golden Hour. For NPR, she co-created and co hosted the podcast Life Kit: Parenting. Her last book was The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, And Where We Go Now. Kamenetz currently advises the Climate Mental Health Network, working on new initiatives at the intersection of well-being and climate change. There, she created the Climate Emotions Wheel, which is being used all over the world to help people understand their climate feelings. She worked with the eco-spiritual teacher Joanna Macy producing her last project, the podcast We Are The Great Turning. Her next book, forthcoming from Bloomsbury, is about how to cope with the world right now: the emotional landscape of polycrisis.

The Peaceful Grandparent Project, with Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning

Nov 3, 2025

The Peaceful Grandparent Project:

with Orot, Center for New Jewish Learning

January 15 – February 26, 2026

Live Sessions: Thursdays, 2:00-3:15pm ET

January 15, 22, 29, February 5, 19, 26 (no class on February 12)

Program Limited to 25 Participants

Click Here to Register

Discover a Practice and Community to Help You Connect More Meaningfully with Your Grandchildren

The Peaceful Grandparent Project is offered in partnership with our colleagues at Orot. This transformative cohort offers grandparents the tools to deepen connections with their adult children and grandchildren and infuse family moments with sacredness and tranquility.

This accessible six-week course interweaves Jewish wisdom with mindfulness practices and teachings to help grandparents cultivate greater empathy, understanding, and connection in their families.

As A Grandparent, Do You:

Wonder about the new role you play within your family?
Strive to have the strongest relationship possible with your grandchildren?
Try to impart your Jewish values and Jewish pride to your grandchildren?
Want to connect more openly and lovingly with your adult children and in-law children?

Joining our Peaceful Grandparent Cohort Will Support Your Journey Towards:

Shema – Listening with attunement, without judgment
Re-iyah – Seeing and accepting our grandchildren and adult children as they are
Shavat va’yinafash – Finding self-care moments of rest and renewal
Ahava – Opening the rich complexity of grandparent love
Hitchadshut – Seeing the everyday through the lens of holiness

Save Your Spot!

Testimonials

“Each session gives me the space to explore my grandparenting challenges and beliefs in the context of Jewish sources and other parents’ experiences. Through the close examination of targeted Jewish texts, our small cohort shared, laughed and cried together. And more importantly, we reflected on our relationships with our children and grandchildren.”

- Peaceful Grandparent Project Participant

“I found Peaceful Grandparent to be thought-provoking, stimulating and very interesting. It was rewarding to be with such a knowledgeable facilitator and deep thinking group of grandparents. Peaceful Grandparent enables grandparents to engage with one another on a deep level while studying Jewish texts and readings from other sources, to learn how to deepen their relationships with their grandchildren and to think about the role grandparents play in their grandchildren’s lives and what they want to leave with their grandchildren. Peaceful Grandparent stimulates you to think differently and opens your ears and eyes and heart to new ways of understanding and practice.”

- Peaceful Grandparent Project Participant

Register Today for The Peaceful Grandparent Project

IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

To provide the best experience, this program is limited to 25 participants. In the form below, please select your tuition level, fill in your information, and hit submit to be sent to the registration page.

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Tuition(Required)

Full: $349

Reduced: $249

Reduced: $149

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Meet Your Instructor

Dr. Jane Sherwin Shapiro

Jane Shapiro is passionate about all aspects of Jewish teaching and learning. She has been a teacher to many over the last thirty five years, in classes ranging from weekly Torah study to Jewish thought, history, and literature and has worked with organizations which include the Florence Melton School, Camp Ramah, Spertus Institute for Learning and Leadership, and Orot. She likes to explore new ways to assist learners in bringing Jewish wisdom into conversation with their lives. Currently she is thinking and teaching about the spiritual practices of being a grandparent. She is a graduate of Princeton University, and received her doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary. In 2017, Jane received an Educators Award from the Covenant Foundation. In 2018 she was featured in an Eli talk on “The Torah of Bubbiehood.” She lives in Skokie, Illinois with her husband David and is also mother to four sons, mother-in-law to three daughters, and grandmother to six.

Sign Up Today

Since 1999, IJS has been a leader in teaching traditional and contemporary Jewish spiritual practices that cultivate mindfulness so that each of us might act with enriched wisdom, clarity, and compassion. These practices, grounded in Jewish values and thought, enable participants to develop important skills while strengthening leadership capacities, deepening their inner lives, and connecting more meaningfully with others, Judaism, and the sacred.

Founded in 2014, Orot was started by a group of passionate Jewish educators committed to redesigning the paradigm of Jewish learning and opening up the well of Jewish wisdom to all. Orot creates programs which foster the wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities. Orot’s programs provide opportunities and offer tools for meaning-making, nourishment, and refuge using personally resonant and accessible Jewish teachings, practices, and experiences.

Seeing into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter

Nov 3, 2025

Seeing into the Life of Things:

Imagination and the Sacred Encounter

January 14 – February 11, 2026

Five online sessions Wednesdays, 2:00 – 3:15 PM ET

January 14, 21, 28, February 4, 11

Plus access to a dedicated WhatsApp group for sharing blessings, perceptions, and dream moments.

Click Here to Register

Cultivate a daily gratitude practice by leaving the world of negative emotions and reactivity

Renowned author and poet Rodger Kamenetz (author of the classic bestseller The Jew in the Lotus), will offer a five-week program of imaginative spiritual practice based on his new book: Seeing into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter.

Do you find yourself grappling with the anxiety and uncertainty of our times? How can we engage our five senses to develop a gratitude practice that purifies an afflictive state of mind? In this 5-week course, you will embark on a journey that entwines our senses, dreams, and imagination with the sacred by:

Engaging the healing power of “feeling into images” in memory, perception, and dreams.
Cultivating a mindset of “counting blessings” and integrating this blessing practice into the traditional Jewish morning prayer practice.
Connecting inner feelings with the outer world, evoking images from our dream life.
Developing greater empathy and a shift in consciousness toward what Kamenetz terms “the Great Opening.”

This course includes access to a dedicated WhatsApp group for discussion and a restorative curriculum that:

Introduces the modeh/modah ani as a gratitude practice.
Enhances your morning prayer practice with counting blessings.
Cultivates your senses and the hidden role of imagination in everyday perception.
Introduces dreams as the laboratory of imagination.
Contemplates images in dream and how dreams can bring us to a cosmic religious experience.

Participants are strongly encouraged to purchase Rodger Kamenetz’s book, Seeing into the Life of Things: Imagination and the Sacred Encounter. Available at booksellers everywhere, including Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, and Amazon.

Discover for yourself what Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called “radical amazement”

Sign Up Today

Components of the Course

Week 1

A Challenge from the Dalai Lama

A Challenge from the Dalai Lama: How do you purify afflictive states of mind?

The neglected power of imagination. The role of imagination in memory. A simple visualization practice. Introduction to the modeh/modah ani as a gratitude practice.

Week 2

Counting Blessings

Counting Blessings

A visualization practice for cherishing moments of blessing. Adding counting blessings to morning prayer practice.

Week 3

Imaginative Perception

Imaginative Perception: “What we half-create and perceive”

The hidden role of imagination in everyday perception. Exercises in cultivating your senses. Finding infinity in a wildflower. Imaginative perception and Heschel’s “radical amazement.” The sacred encounter in waking life. The cosmic religious experience.

Week 4

Memory and Dream Images

Memory and Dream Images: Deep Memory; Spots of Time

Introduction to dreams as a laboratory of imagination. The power of contemplating formative memories. Distinguishing imagination in dreams from the story-telling of the ego. Distinguishing feeling and reaction to purify afflictive states of mind.

Week 5

Sacred Encounters in Dreams

Sacred Encounters in Dreams

How dreams can bring us to a cosmic religious experience, encounters with the angelic /archetypal in dreams. Contemplating images in dreams.

Register Now

Testimonials

“With his profound knowledge of poetry, and decades of experience in dreamwork, as well as Hasidic studies, Kamenetz offers not just a deep investigation of the power of images to open up a more connected and engaged life, but a path of practice to help reconnect us with our authentic self and the vivid life of the soul. I don’t know of a book that so richly brings together poetry, dreams, imagination and the spiritual life. It needed to be written, and needs to be read, now more than ever. A real gem.”

—Henry Shukman, author of One Blade of Grass and Original Love

“This book is a harvest of living wisdom, a ripening of the garden Rodger Kamenetz has been cultivating for decades. Tenderly and with lucid insight, he walks us through the gates of poetry and dreams, of Jewish mysticism and Zen Buddhism, of science and art. Not only does Kamenetz celebrate the power of the imagination to open our souls, but the abundance of images he scoops up from his own life and offers to us with outstretched hands cannot help but transform our ordinary lives from a set of tasks to be accomplished into an ever-unfolding sacred encounter.”

—Mirabai Starr, author of God of Love and Ordinary Mysticism

“Rodger Kamenetz opened a new side to our congregation that many of us didn’t know was there. Rodger helped people explore a spiritual depth that inspired and encouraged many to live more boldly and with greater intention and compassion. Unlike some Scholar in Residence experiences, which are nice but afterwards, we all carry on as before, Rodger left our community with much to explore and build upon. I can’t recommend him more highly as a scholar or artist in residence.”

—Rabbi Laurence Rosenthal, Ahavat Achim Synagogue, Atlanta GA

Register Now

IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

Abundance Level

$349

Register

Basic Level

$249

Register

Reduced Level

$149

Register

Meet Your Instructor:

Rodger Kamenetz

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. Kamenetz’s Burnt Books, in Schocken/Nextbook’s Jewish Encounters series, once again crosses boundaries, between literature and religion. It begins as a dual biography of Franz Kafka and Rebbe Nachman, who each asked his best friend to burn his books. It ends with Kamenetz on his own pilgrimage to Kafka’s Prague and to the rebbe’s grave in Ukraine.

Born in Baltimore, Rodger Kamenetz has degrees from Yale, Johns Hopkins and Stanford. At Louisiana State University, he held a dual appointment as a Professor of English and Professor of Religious Studies and founded the MFA program in creative writing and the Jewish Studies minor. He retired as LSU Distinguished Professor and Sternberg Honors Chair Professor. He lives in New Orleans where he now devotes himself to his work with clients who seek spiritual direction through dreams.

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An Evening of Light

Sep 19, 2025

Join us for

An Evening of Light

Celebrating 25 years of spiritual practice, mindfulness, and connection

Honoring

Dorian Goldman and Marvin Israelow

for their vision, leadership, and devotion to IJS

December 14, 2025 from 6:00 – 9:00 PM

B’nai Jeshurun, 257 West 88th Street, New York City

Heavy hors d’oeuvres & dessert will be served. Festive Attire.

Together on the first night of Chanukah, we will honor the past, celebrate the present, and light the way forward.

There are 4 Ways to Support the Celebration

Become A Sponsor

Attend the Event

Watch the Livestream

Make A Donation

Honorary Committee (In Formation)

Sylvia Boorstein

Cantor Joshua Breitzer

Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein

Rabbi Angela Buchdahl

Cantor Shayna De Lowe

Alisa Doctoroff

Cantor Joanna Dulkin

Jane Eisner

Rabbi Jacqueline Ellenson

Rabbi Tirzah Firestone

Rabbi Nancy Flam

Rabbi Laura Geller

Rabbi Matthew Gewirtz

Rabbi Lisa Goldstein

Ann Greenstein

Sarah Hurwitz

Rabbi David Ingber

Rabbi Naama Kelman

Rabbi Myriam Klotz

Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie

Rabbi Roly Matalon

Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg

Rabbi Karen Perolman

Abigail Pogrebin

Terry Rosenberg

John Ruskay

Larry Schwartz

Rabbi Jonathan Slater

Rabbi Felicia Sol

Rabbi Benjamin Spratt

Rabbi Michael Strassfeld

Rabbi Rachel Timoner

Spiritual Direction Groups

Sep 10, 2025

Spiritual Direction Groups

with Rabbi Shir Meira Feit and Ashley Plotnick, MEd, MAJS, LCSW

All three Spiritual Direction Groups are now full. You may register below to join the waitlist.

Sign Up to Be Added to the Waitlist

We are exploring if we are able to run additional Spiritual Direction Groups this year. You may indicate on this form if you wish to be contacted if additional groups open for registration.

Four 90-minute sessions. Three groups to choose from:

Group 1: November 4, 11, 18, 25
Group 2: December 2, 9, 16, 23
Group 3: January 15, 29, Feb 12, 26

Grow in your awareness and experience of the sacred dimension of life in the company of others.

Spiritual Direction Groups provide the unique opportunity to be part of an intimate group for spiritual growth facilitated by a seasoned Spiritual Director. Spiritual direction is a contemplative practice that invites you to grow in awareness of the sacred dimension present in every moment.

For many of us, having spiritual companions in our lives helps cultivate our ability to stop and pay attention to “the still, small voice within.” To hear that voice, members of your group will accompany you with heartfelt listening, help you connect with your spiritual longing, explore your inner wisdom, and strengthen your attunement to the sacred.

CONNECT to your inner knowing and wisdom.
OPEN your heart to an awareness of the sacred dimension of life
NURTURE your capacity for resilience, compassion, and well-being.
CULTIVATE insight and wise action in response to the challenges of our world.
JOIN with others as you learn from and strengthen one another’s journeys.

Join a group to support your journey. Together, we’ll grow in our awareness and experience of the sacred dimension present in every moment.

Each Spiritual Direction group will include 5-6 people who will meet with either Rabbi Shir Meira Feit or Ashley Plotnick, MEd, MAJS, LCSW, both of whom are well-known to the IJS community and experienced Spiritual Directors.

Our three Spiritual Direction groups will meet on the following dates and times. Additional groups may be added if there is enough interest.

With Shir Meira Feit:

Tuesdays, 11:00-12:30pm ET

Group 1: November 4, 11, 18, 25
Group 2: December 2, 9, 16, 23

With Ashley Plotnick:

Thursdays, 2:30-4:00pm ET

Group 3: January 15, 29, Feb 12, 26

Join the Waitlist

Testimonials

The Spiritual Direction Groups will give participants a chance to experience this transformative practice with IJS for the first time. We are pleased to share some thoughts from graduates of IJS’s 18 month cohort program, Kol Dodi: Jewish Spiritual Director Training:

“[I want to express] My deep, deep appreciation for this opportunity, which has unleashed a path and a deepening that is such a blessing. Honestly, someday I would love to think that I could craft words that I feel would properly describe the gifts of this program and of spiritual direction!”

“I’ve loved Kol Dodi. It is one of the very best things I’ve ever done for myself, and that is thanks to you and the beautifully conceived and executed program you provided. Thank you!”

Meet Your Instructors

Rabbi Shir Meira Feit

Rabbi Shir Meira Feit is a musician, composer, ritual facilitator, and spiritual director. They have released several solo and collaborative albums of sacred music and has facilitated countless circles of communal ritual and song, helping people of all backgrounds connect with their inner wisdom and joy. Shir worked as a serial spiritual entrepreneur for twenty years in the Jewish Renewal movement, and in the Zen Peacemakers Order, co-facilitating their Bearing Witness Retreats in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Today, Shir offers their teachings as an independent educator and musician and as a spiritual director, helping others to grow and flourish at the dynamic edge of spiritual emergence. In the last several years, Shir’s work and life have been heavily influenced by the spiritual practice of parenting three children, interpersonal neurobiology, somatic psychology, and neuroqueer theory. They live with their family in New York’s Hudson Valley.

4worlds.net

Ashley Plotnick, MEd, MAJS, LCSW

Ashley Plotnick, LCSW, MAJS, M.Ed., is a psychotherapist, spiritual director, and Jewish educator with extensive experience in the Jewish community. Ashley completed training in spiritual direction through the Morei Derekh program and is a spiritual director for HUC-JIR rabbinical students, as well as a mentor for the Kol Dodi spiritual direction training program at IJS. Additionally, Ashley works with clergy through the CCAR as a spiritually oriented counselor. She is also completing a Doctor of Ministry degree in contemplative practice, spiritual renewal, and strategic leadership at Claremont School of Theology, where her research focuses on the Shekhinah in the practice of spiritual direction. Concurrently, she is completing training in compassion-based spiritual direction supervision, through the lens of internal family systems. Ashley’s extensive training in mindfulness practice enables her to hold each person’s story with compassion and to meet them with presence. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago with her husband and three children, her greatest loves and most important spiritual practice.

ashleyplotnick.com

The Shofar Project 5785: Getting Real (Again) for the New Year

Jul 28, 2025

The Shofar Project:

Getting Real (Again) for the New Year

A FREE Four-Week Online Program from IJS for the Hebrew month of Elul:

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Join the IJS community and our core faculty (Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, Rebecca Schisler, and Rabbi Marc Margolius) for four weeks of Jewish spiritual practice to prepare for the Jewish New Year. We’ll come together throughout the month of Elul, which is traditionally a season of teshuva (return), to engage in deepened introspection, reflection, and practice leading up to the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

This year, back by popular demand, our teachings will be drawn from This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, the contemporary classic by Rabbi Alan Lew, z”l.

Each time we revisit this book, it offers up something new, —as we return to reflect on the essential truths of our lives after a year of change and growth.

This free program features

Four NEW weekly written teachings on themes drawn from This is Real, sent by email on four consecutive Sundays, starting August 24, Rosh Chodesh Elul. These teachings will include Jewish mindfulness practices, questions for reflection and journaling, and supplemental materials such as poetry and music.
Four weekly live practice sessions (Wednesdays from 8-9 pm ET on August 27 and September 3, 10, and 17), each led by a different IJS faculty member, elaborating upon the week’s teaching, featuring meditation or other contemplative practice and small-group processing. Sessions will be recorded and available for those who cannot attend live.
A recorded meditation by each week’s teacher that connects to the teaching and will help you deepen your practice at home.
An opportunity to deepen your practice through chevruta (partner) study and practice.

Testimonials

“Rabbi Lew’s book is new to me this year, and I am finding it to be a wonderful companion during this time of Elul leading up to the High Holidays. Thank you at IJS so much for making this program available. I think that for the first time in my life I am not dreading the holidays and instead am looking forward to them, and appreciating the inner growth journey in this time before.”

Phyllis

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Meet Your Instructors:

Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell

Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell is Senior Core Faculty at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS), where he teaches Jewish mindfulness and text and directs cohort and retreat programs. Jordan began working for IJS as rabbinical student intern in 2005, and was on staff from 2011-2017, as a teacher of Jewish Mindfulness, leading retreats, and as Director of the Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training. Jordan also taught meditation to rabbis and cantors through IJS’ Clergy Leadership Program.

Currently at IJS, Jordan focuses on teaching Jewish mindfulness and text, planning and directing retreats, and leading the development of a new training program for advanced teachers of Jewish mindfulness.Jordan will also continue to share his expertise through online courses and on retreats, fostering mindful engagement with Jewish wisdom and tradition.

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 Core Faculty Member with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and also enjoys working with beloved, The Jewish Studio Project, Kirva, the Avodah Institute for Social Change, and the Jewish Learning Collaborative, among other national Jewish organisations. Additionally, she delights in serving as a shlichat tzibbur, life spiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, consultant, facilitator, teacher, liturgist and songstress. Her work in these realms is informed by her lived experience as a queer, bi-racial, child-free Jewish person, 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.

Rabbi Marc Margolius

Rabbi Marc Margolius hosts IJS’s online daily mindfulness meditation sessions and teaches Awareness in Action: Cultivating Character through Mindfulness and Middot, our online program in tikkun middot practice, integrating Jewish mindfulness with attention to core middot, character traits.

Previously, Marc served as rabbi at West End Synagogue in Manhattan and Congregation Beth Am Israel in Penn Valley, PA, where he pioneered a Shabbat-centered model of congregational engagement. He developed and led the Legacy Heritage Innovation Project at the Legacy Heritage Fund from 2005-2010, an initiative to promote systemic educational change in congregations around the globe.

Long active in social justice activism, Marc is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and of Yale Law School and lives in New York City.

Rebecca Schisler

Rebecca is a meditation teacher, artist, and Jewish educator. A devoted contemplative practitioner, she has led groups and taught classes and retreats with Or HaLev, Wilderness Torah, Pardes, Stanford School of Medicine, Urban Adamah, Hamakom, and the Awakened Heart Project. 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. Rebecca currently lives in the California Bay Area, where she maintains a lively studio art practice as the artist-in-residence at the JCC East Bay, loves to host Jewish gatherings of all kinds, and tries to lose herself among her neighboring redwood trees as much as possible.

The Shofar Project 5785: A Study and Practice Group for Young Adults

Jul 28, 2025

The Shofar Project 5785

A Study and Practice Group for Young Adults

A FREE 4-week program led by Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife and Rebecca Schisler

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We invite you to enter into a powerful journey of returning to our most authentic selves.

Please join Rebecca Schisler, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, and an intimate group of folks in their 20s and 30s for four special sessions of our weekly Shevet Jewish Mindfulness Community to prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur during the month of Elul. Together, we’ll immerse ourselves in deepened introspection, reflection, and practice during this period traditionally dedicated to teshuva (return).

We will draw our teachings during this time from This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, the contemporary classic by Rabbi Alan Lew, z”l, which offers us profound insights into Elul, the holiday season, and the process of teshuvah — returning again to our intentions for the person we wish to be.

This free program features

Four weekly live practice sessions (8:00 – 9:15 PM ET on August 25 and September 2, 8, and 15), featuring teachings from the book as well as meditation or other contemplative practice and small-group processing. Sessions will be recorded and available for those who cannot attend live.
Community connection via the Shevet WhatsApp discussion group.
An (optional) opportunity to deepen your practice by learning and studying with a chevruta, a study partner.

Together we breathe, together we change, together we grow.

Testimonials

“Thank you Keshira and Rebecca for guiding us through this journey so lovingly. Thanks everyone for being present and brave throughout this process 🙏🏾”

Grace

“For me, it’s a paradigm shift to understand mindfulness meditation as teshuva.”

Sara

“I meditate pretty much every day at lunch for ~ 10 minutes. Today I did the Teshuvah practice and it felt so grounding to be honoring both this time of Elul specifically and my Jewishness more generally in my daily practice. So grateful to you all!”

Ali L.

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Meet Your Instructors:

Rebecca Schisler

Rebecca is a meditation teacher, artist, and Jewish educator. A devoted contemplative practitioner, she has led groups and taught classes and retreats with Or HaLev, Wilderness Torah, Pardes, Stanford School of Medicine, Urban Adamah, Hamakom, and the Awakened Heart Project. 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. Rebecca currently lives in the California Bay Area, where she maintains a lively studio art practice as the artist-in-residence at the JCC East Bay, loves to host Jewish gatherings of all kinds, and tries to lose herself among her neighboring redwood trees as much as possible.

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 Core Faculty Member with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and also enjoys working with beloved, The Jewish Studio Project, Kirva, the Avodah Institute for Social Change, and the Jewish Learning Collaborative, among other national Jewish organisations. Additionally, she delights in serving as a shlichat tzibbur, life spiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, consultant, facilitator, teacher, liturgist and songstress. Her work in these realms is informed by her lived experience as a queer, bi-racial, child-free Jewish person, 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.

Fire and Flow: Creativity and Mindfulness

Jul 28, 2025

Fire and Flow:

Creativity and Mindfulness

Co-Sponsored by the Jewish Studio Project

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Two virtual live sessions each month:

Learning sessions with IJS on Tuesdays at 3:30-5:00 PM ET

Creative Studio Sessions hosted by the Jewish Studio Project on Sundays, 1:00-2:30 PM ET

All sessions facilitated by Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife. Full course calendar is listed below.

Sign Up to Be Notified When Registration Opens

Find the spark of creativity within you, and open the way for it to flow into your daily life.

Fire and Flow: Creativity and Mindfulness is a year long journey into the heart of creative and spiritual practice — a space where mindfulness and artistic expression meet to spark insight and joy, presence, purpose, and connection. Rooted in the idea that each of us is made in the Divine image, this course will help each person tap into their innate capacity to create, whether through visual art, writing, ritual creation, prayer, or more.

Rather than focusing on outcomes or product, Fire and Flow will offer the space to wonder, reflect, and reconnect with the Source of creativity. We’ll explore dimensions of the creative process that can be applied to life off-the-page, cultivate practices for more mindful living, and discover how creative engagement can deepen our sense of meaning and connection to Judaism — individually and in community.

Whether you’re a lifelong artist or creatively curious, this class is a chance to rekindle your inner fire and move through the world with more flow.

DISCOVER how creative practice can be an exercise in mindfulness.
AWAKEN your creative impulse to renew your body, mind, heart, and soul.
EXPAND your resilience and compassion by engaging with creativity as a healing and grounding practice.
CULTIVATE practical tools to move between focused creation and receptive flow.
DEEPEN your capacity for presence as you work and play with the materials and the page.
CONNECT with the source of creativity and experience the feeling of creation flowing through you.

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Monthly Themes

Elul

Overview

Tishrei

Source of Creativity

Cheshvan

Surrender

Kislev

Non-Judgement

Tevet

Notice Everything

Shvat

Inspiration

Adar

Curiosity

Nisan

Divine Partnership

Iyar

Blockages

Sivan

Abundance

Tammuz

Resistance

Av

Flow

Testimonials

“Everyone should get the chance to experience the caring facilitation and guidance of Keshira leading you through the Jewish Studio Process. They model what it looks like to create a virtual space where everyone can show up just as you are — feeling safe, supported, and seen. I wWill absolutely look to take classes with her again!”

“Keshira’s facilitating was so great– — so calm and welcoming, so reassuring, walking us through the process with such ease and clarity, creating a container in this challenging time while also inviting us to challenge ourselves. I love that the series had an arc — from rest to dreams to rededication — and I loved the richness of the source sheets, which had useful texts that spoke to each other and inspiring questions that led to some tender and searching havruta conversations.”

“[Keshira] is a wonderful facilitator; authentic, warm, and she creates a safe container for the participants to feel comfortable sharing in their own way, and respecting one another’s choices in each session.”

Meet Your Instructor:

Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife

IJS Core Faculty

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 Core Faculty Member with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and also enjoys working with beloved, The Jewish Studio Project, Kirva, the Avodah Institute for Social Change, and the Jewish Learning Collaborative, among other national Jewish organisations. Additionally, she delights in serving as a shlichat tzibbur, life spiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, consultant, facilitator, teacher, liturgist and songstress. Her work in these realms is informed by her lived experience as a queer, bi-racial, child-free Jewish person, 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.

Text Study 5786

Jul 28, 2025

Text Study 5786

Deepen Your Experience with Torah

Full Year Program

Begins October 12, 2025

Studying and interpreting Torah is one of Judaism’s oldest and richest forms of spiritual practice. At IJS, we approach text study holistically – both as an intellectual experience and as an opportunity for experiential, heart-centered, practice-based spiritual growth and development.

This year, we bring you two new text study streams with extraordinary Torah teachers, both of whom provide rich material for contemplative study. These programs will support you in finding personal meaning, expanding your spiritual awareness, and deepening your inner life and mindfulness practice. We encourage you to sign-up for a chevruta/study partner or take the course with a friend in order to deepen your learning and practice.

Bring the transformative light of Torah and Hasidic wisdom into your daily life.

Register Now

For All Learners

A Healing Journey

Through the Torah

Trauma, Resilience, and the Tree of Life

with Rabbi Lisa Goldstein

In this text study, Rabbi Lisa Goldstein will take us on a healing journey through the Torah, which has been called “Etz Chayim—the Tree of Life” for giving strength and hope to Jews for millennia. During troubled times like these, we yearn to heal ourselves and to grow, and the stories of our ancestors grappling with their own hardships can provide a guide.

We will examine each Torah portion through a trauma-informed lens so we can draw upon its wisdom, find the potential for growth within ourselves, and cultivate resilience and open-heartedness to help us navigate the days ahead.

This offering is designed to be accessible to all learners – no prior experience with Torah study or mindfulness is required.

Rabbi Lisa will also offer monthly live Zoom sessions for practice and Q&A.

In this text stream, every week you will receive:

Teachings drawn from the well of ancestral wisdom and resilience, including exploration of Torah, midrash, mystical texts, and other sources from Jewish tradition.
Cutting-edge insights into the ways that different kinds of trauma (intergenerational, attachment, complex, shock, etc.) impact our lives and how healing takes place.
A trauma-informed lens to mindfulness practices that can support resilience, personal growth, and self-harmony, even as challenging events continue to take place. (Growth doesn’t have to be “post-traumatic”!)
Instructions for personal practice and chevruta discussion that can deepen integration of learning and experience.
Access to an archive of all texts and materials from previous weeks’ teachings.

Monthly Live Sessions will be held on Tuesdays from 3:00-4:00 PM ET on the following dates:

2025: November 4, December 2
2026: January 6, February 3, March 10, April 7, May 5, June 2, July 7, August 4, September 1 and September 29

Here’s What Rabbi Lisa’s Students Have to Say About The Impact of Her Teaching on Their Practice:

“Rabbi Lisa is a gifted educator who makes our community members feel as if they are learners and teachers. She uses a strengths-based approach to bring people into text, and to foster spaces that invite constituents to be vulnerable and open. We have benefited deeply from the way in which she transmits and elicits knowledge.” – Claire Nisen

“Rabbi Lisa is notably attentive to creating inviting and peaceful atmospheres for learning. She skillfully reads the temperature of the room with care and her invitations for participation are genuine invitations. She provides clarity and guidance to her students while holding their energy, spirit, and needs with utmost sensitivity and consideration. She is a true gift to each student fortunate enough to learn with and from her.” – Abby Mintz

In this text study, Rabbi Lisa Goldstein will take us on a healing journey through the Torah, which has been called “Etz Chayim—the Tree of Life” for giving strength and hope to Jews for millennia. During troubled times like these, we yearn to heal ourselves and to grow, and the stories of our ancestors grappling with their own hardships can provide a guide.

We will examine each Torah portion through a trauma-informed lens so we can draw upon its wisdom, find the potential for growth within ourselves, and cultivate resilience and open-heartedness to help us navigate the days ahead.

This offering is designed to be accessible to all learners – no prior experience with Torah study or mindfulness is required.

Rabbi Lisa will also offer monthly live Zoom sessions for practice and Q&A. (recorded for those unable to attend live)

In this text stream, every week you will receive:

Teachings drawn from the well of ancestral wisdom and resilience, including exploration of Torah, midrash, mystical texts, and other sources from Jewish tradition.
Cutting-edge insights into the ways that different kinds of trauma (intergenerational, attachment, complex, shock, etc.) impact our lives and how healing takes place.
A trauma-informed lens to mindfulness practices that can support resilience, personal growth, and self-harmony, even as challenging events continue to take place. (Growth doesn’t have to be “post-traumatic”!)
Instructions for personal practice and chevruta discussion that can deepen integration of learning and experience.
Access to an archive of all texts and materials from previous weeks’ teachings.

Monthly Live Sessions will be held on Tuesdays from 3:00-4:00 PM ET on the following dates:

2025: November 4, December 2
2026: January 6, February 3, March 10, April 7, May 5, June 2, July 7, August 4, September 1 and September 29

Here’s What Rabbi Lisa’s Students Have to Say About The Impact of Her Teaching on Their Practice

“Rabbi Lisa is a gifted educator who makes our community members feel as if they are learners and teachers. She uses a strengths-based approach to bring people into text, and to foster spaces that invite constituents to be vulnerable and open. We have benefited deeply from the way in which she transmits and elicits knowledge.” – Claire Nisen

“Rabbi Lisa is notably attentive to creating inviting and peaceful atmospheres for learning. She skillfully reads the temperature of the room with care and her invitations for participation are genuine invitations. She provides clarity and guidance to her students while holding their energy, spirit, and needs with utmost sensitivity and consideration. She is a true gift to each student fortunate enough to learn with and from her.” – Abby Mintz

For Seasoned Learners

Awareness in All Things

Rebbe Nachman of Breslov on the Weekly Torah Portion

with Rabbi Sam Feinsmith

In this new IJS course—Awareness in All Things: Rebbe Nachman of Breslov on the Weekly Torah Portion—Rabbi Sam Feinsmith will guide us through the powerful teachings of the charismatic Hasidic master Rebbe Nachman (1772-1810) and his principal student, Reb Noson (1780-1844).

During his lifetime, Rebbe Nachman inspired the revival of the Hasidic movement, drawing thousands of followers on account of his unparalleled piety and erudition; practical, down-to-earth, joyous spirituality; and his emphasis on cultivating a personal, unmediated relationship with the Divine. His prolific, original teachings continue to provide practical wisdom that remains highly relevant in our time.

Each week, we will ground our work of cultivating spiritual awareness and refining our character in a single teaching from Rebbe Nachman on the Torah portion, available in Hebrew and English. Rabbi Feinsmith will translate each teaching into a contemporary idiom with an original, mindfulness-inspired commentary, reflection questions for journaling/chevruta study, practice instructions, and guided audio meditations.

This course is for seasoned students of Hasidic text and mindfulness practice who wish to draw inspiration, deepen their contemplative practice, and expand their knowledge of Kabbalah and Hasidic spirituality. Though the teachings of Rebbe Nachman and Reb Noson are widely available, this year-long offering supports us to work with them in an accessible, immersive, and transformative manner and explore their profound relevance for our times.

Rabbi Sam will also offer monthly live Zoom sessions for practice and Q&A. (recorded for those unable to attend live)

In this text stream, every week you will receive:

A carefully-selected piece of commentary on the weekly Torah portion, excerpted from the original Hebrew text
An annotated English translation of the week’s text along with a summary of key points that pertain to spiritual practice
Reflection questions designed to support you in discovering authentic connections between the text and your lived experience
Detailed instructions for mindfulness practice
Access to an archive of all texts and materials from previous weeks’ teachings

Monthly Live Sessions will be held on Mondays from 3:00-4:15 PM ET on the following dates:

2025: November 10, December 15
2026: January 12, February 9, March 9, April 13, May 11, June 8, July 6, August 10, September 14, and October 5

This offering is best suited for seasoned students of Hasidic text and mindfulness practice, and it will also provide rich content for those who wish to develop sermons and teachings for their congregations.

By participating in this course of study and practice, you will:

Grow your knowledge of key Hasidic terms, ideas, views, and practices
Deepen your mindfulness practice
Deepen your awareness of God’s loving presence within and all around you
Cultivate habits of heart and mind that nurture greater balance, well-being, and resilience during difficult times
Gain access to new materials for developing sermons and teachings for your community
If studying with a chevruta, develop a deeper sense of spiritual intimacy and kinship as you practice and study together and explore the relevance of the teachings to your spiritual growth

In this new IJS course—Awareness in All Things: Rebbe Nachman of Breslov on the Weekly Torah Portion—Rabbi Sam Feinsmith will guide us through the powerful teachings of the charismatic Hasidic master Rebbe Nachman (1772-1810) and his principal student, Reb Noson (1780-1844).

During his lifetime, Rebbe Nachman inspired the revival of the Hasidic movement, drawing thousands of followers on account of his unparalleled piety and erudition; practical, down-to-earth, joyous spirituality; and his emphasis on cultivating a personal, unmediated relationship with the Divine. His prolific, original teachings continue to provide practical wisdom that remains highly relevant in our time.

Each week, we will ground our work of cultivating spiritual awareness and refining our character in a single teaching from Rebbe Nachman on the Torah portion, available in Hebrew and English. Rabbi Feinsmith will translate each teaching into a contemporary idiom with an original, mindfulness-inspired commentary, reflection questions for journaling/chevruta study, practice instructions, and guided audio meditations.

This course is for seasoned students of Hasidic text and mindfulness practice who wish to draw inspiration, deepen their contemplative practice, and expand their knowledge of Kabbalah and Hasidic spirituality. Though the teachings of Rebbe Nachman and Reb Noson are widely available, this year-long offering supports us to work with them in an accessible, immersive, and transformative manner and explore their profound relevance for our times.

Rabbi Sam will also offer monthly live Zoom sessions for practice and Q&A. (recorded for those unable to attend live)

In this text stream, every week you will receive:

A carefully-selected piece of commentary on the weekly Torah portion, excerpted from the original Hebrew text
An annotated English translation of the week’s text along with a summary of key points that pertain to spiritual practice
Reflection questions designed to support you in discovering authentic connections between the text and your lived experience
Detailed instructions for mindfulness practice
Access to an archive of all texts and materials from previous weeks’ teachings

Monthly Live Sessions will be held on Mondays from 3:00-4:15 PM ET on the following dates:

2025: November 10, December 15
2026: January 12, February 9, March 9, April 13, May 11, June 8, July 6, August 10, September 14, and October 5

This offering is best suited for seasoned students of Hasidic text and mindfulness practice, and it will also provide rich content for those who wish to develop sermons and teachings for their congregations.

By participating in this course of study and practice, you will:

Grow your knowledge of key Hasidic terms, ideas, views, and practices
Deepen your mindfulness practice
Deepen your awareness of God’s loving presence within and all around you
Cultivate habits of heart and mind that nurture greater balance, well-being, and resilience during difficult times
Gain access to new materials for developing sermons and teachings for your community
If studying with a chevruta, develop a deeper sense of spiritual intimacy and kinship as you practice and study together and explore the relevance of the teachings to your spiritual growth

Course Tuition

IJS is pleased to offer these courses at three tuition levels.

We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

For All Learners:

A Healing Journey Through the Torah

$349

$299

$199

For Seasoned Learners:

Awareness in All Things

$449

$399

$299

Meet Your Instructors

Rabbi Lisa Goldstein is a teacher, consultant, and Master Practitioner of NARM, a modality of healing complex trauma. She consults in the fields of education, trauma healing and spirituality for organizations including M2 Institute for Experiential Jewish Education and the Covenant Foundation. She also works one-on-one to support people in their journeys of healing and spiritual growth.

Educated at Brown University and Hebrew Union College, Rabbi Goldstein has almost 25 years of executive experience, having served as the executive director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and Hillel of San Diego. She teaches a wide variety of courses, both online and in person, with an emphasis on spiritual wisdom, prayer and meditation, and the teachings of R. Nahman of Breslov.

Rabbi Sam Feinsmith has been immersed in Jewish contemplative living, learning, and teaching for over twenty years, conducting Jewish meditation workshops, programs, and retreats for children, teens, Jewish educators, clergy, and community leaders. He’s passionate about practicing and teaching meditation and making the spiritual teachings of Hasidism available to all. He received an MA in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and rabbinic ordination from YCT Rabbinical School. He also trained as a Jewish mindfulness meditation teacher with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program. Sam lives on the land of the Council of the Three Fires – the Potowatami, Ojibwe, and Odawa tribes – currently known as Evanston, IL with his wife Sarah-Bess and daughter Elanit.

Don’t Turn Away: Reading the News Without Losing Your Mind

Jul 28, 2025

Don’t Turn Away:

Reading the News Without Losing Your Mind

November 3 – December 1, 2025

Mondays, 8:00 – 9:15 PM ET

5 Mondays, 8:00-9:15 PM ET | November 3, 10, 17, 24, December 1

Sign Up To Be Notified When Registration Opens

Feeling Overwhelmed by the News?

Are you constantly overwhelmed by headlines, feeling anxious, angry, or just plain exhausted by the 24/7 news cycle? Do you find yourself avoiding the news entirely, yet still feeling guilty about not staying informed?

You’re not alone. In today’s hyper-connected world, many of us struggle to engage with the news without feeling overwhelmed, disempowered, or just plain mad. With antisemitism and the war in Israel and Gaza at the center of so many stories today, the news cycle has become especially intense for many of us as Jews. And it’s natural to want to look away. This phenomenon even has a name: News Avoidance Syndrome.

But what if you could approach the news with clarity, intention, and a sense of calm? Join Jane Eisner and Rabbi Josh Feigelson for a unique, five-session online course designed to transform your relationship with information. Drawing on their deep expertise in journalism, media, and Jewish mindfulness, Jane and Josh will equip you with practical tools and spiritual insights to navigate the news wisely, without losing your mind—or your hope.

Reclaim your peace of mind and empower your engagement with the world.

This course is for anyone who:

Feels overwhelmed or anxious by current events.
Struggles with news fatigue or “doomscrolling.”
Wants to be better informed but doesn’t know how to approach the news without feeling defeated.
Seeks a more mindful and intentional relationship with media.
Is interested in how Jewish wisdom and spiritual practices can offer guidance in navigating modern challenges.

What You'll Discover

This course isn’t about ignoring the world; it’s about engaging with it more effectively and mindfully. Over five weeks, you will:

Understand News Avoidance Syndrome. Learn to recognize why you might be tuning out and how our fight-or-flight response can hijack your ability to stay informed.
Navigate Emotional Overload. Explore the “Second Arrow” of suffering, acknowledging the deeper motivations (guilt, sadness, weariness) that news can trigger us — and learn to meet them with chesed (compassion).
Decode the Media Landscape. Unpack concepts like “news bubbles” and tribal identity, understanding how they shape your perceptions and how to intentionally broaden your perspective.
Embrace Mindful Pauses. Discover the power of Jewish spiritual practices like the “Shabbat mind” and Shemirat HaDibbur (mindful speech), to create intentional space and clarity in your news consumption.
Cultivate Mindful News Engagement. Develop your own personalized plan for wise, intentional news consumption and explore avenues for mindful civic action.

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Meet Your Instructors:

Rabbi Josh Feigelson

Rabbi Josh Feigelson is President & CEO at IJS, which he has led since 2020. . He received ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in 2005 and served for six years as the Hillel Rabbi at Northwestern University, where he also earned a PhD in Religious Studies. In 2011, Josh helped found and served as Executive Director of Ask Big Questions, an initiative of Hillel International, which won the inaugural Lippman-Kanfer Prize for Applied Jewish Wisdom. Most recently he served as Dean of Students at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Josh is the author of Eternal Questions: Reflections, Conversations, and Jewish Mindfulness Practices for the Weekly Torah Portion (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022). He lives with his wife Natalie and their three sons in Skokie, IL.

Jane Eisner

Jane Eisner is an accomplished journalist, educator, consultant, and public speaker. Her book Carole King: She Made the Earth Move will be published in September 2025 by Yale University Press. For more than a decade, she was the Forward’s editor-in-chief, the first woman to lead America’s foremost Jewish publication. She has held academic positions at Columbia Journalism School, University of Pennsylvania, and Wesleyan University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other publications. Among her many volunteer activities, she is a board member of the Hebrew Free Loan Society, chair of the Binswanger Committee at Wesleyan, and a member if the IJS Advisory Council. She lives in New York with her husband, Dr Mark Berger, and together they have three adult daughters.

Don’t Turn Away: Reading the News Without Losing Your Mind

Jul 28, 2025

Don’t Turn Away:

Reading the News Without Losing Your Mind

November 3 – December 1, 2025

Five Live Zoom Sessions

Mondays, 8:00 – 9:15 PM ET

Click Here to Register

Many of us understand following the news to be a personal civic responsibility, but today it can feel like a firehose of disinformation, bias, and negativity, making us want to turn away. There’s even a term for this: News Avoidance Syndrome. In this five-session course taught by Rabbi Josh Feigelson and Jane Eisner, we’ll explore Jewish mindfulness practices to help us stay awake, aware, and engaged with the news while maintaining a sense of balance and not becoming overwhelmed.

Register Now

IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

Abundance Level

$349

Register

Basic Level

$249

Register

Reduced Level

$149

Register

Meet Your Instructors:

Rabbi Josh Feigelson

Josh was appointed Executive Director of IJS in January 2020 and became President & CEO in April 2022. He received ordination from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in 2005, and served for six years as the Hillel Rabbi at Northwestern University, where he also earned a PhD in Religious Studies. In 2011, Josh helped found and served as Executive Director of Ask Big Questions, an initiative of Hillel International, which won the inaugural Lippman-Kanfer Prize for Applied Jewish Wisdom. Josh has also been a consultant and Senior Fellow at The iCenter for Israel Education. Most recently he served as Dean of Students at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Josh is a Wexner Graduate Fellow and was the founding co-chair of the Wexner Fellowship Alumni Committee. He is the author of Eternal Questions: Reflections, Conversations, and Jewish Mindfulness Practices for the Weekly Torah Portion (Ben Yehuda Press, 2022). Josh lives with his wife Natalie and their three sons in Skokie, IL.

Jane Eisner

Jane Eisner is an accomplished journalist, educator, consultant, and public speaker. Her book Carole King: She Made the Earth Move will be published in September 2025 by Yale University Press. For more than a decade, she was the Forward’s editor-in-chief, the first woman to lead America’s foremost Jewish publication. She has held academic positions at Columbia Journalism School, University of Pennsylvania, and Wesleyan University. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other publications.

Among her many volunteer activities, she is a board member of the Hebrew Free Loan Society, chair of the Binswanger Committee at Wesleyan, and a member if the IJS Advisory Council. She lives in New York with her husband, Dr Mark Berger, and together they have three adult daughters.

The Four Worlds of Kabbalah: A Mindfulness-Based Introduction

Jul 28, 2025

The Four Worlds of Kabbalah:

A Mindfulness-Based Introduction

October 22 – November 26, 2025

Five Live Online Sessions: Wed, 3:00-4:15pm EST | Oct 22, 29, Nov 5, 12, 19

Each Followed by a Week of Reflection and Mindful Practice

Click Here to Register

Are you….

Curious how Jewish spirituality and mindfulness might benefit you?
Seeking a practical and accessible introduction to Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism?
Interested in adding a Jewish dimension to your meditation practice?
Wondering what’s Jewish about mindfulness?

The Four Worlds of Kabbalah: A Mindfulness-based Introduction is an accessible and practical introduction to mindful Jewish living grounded in the model of the “Four Worlds”—which locates the sacred in our bodies, emotions, thoughts, and spirit. Together, we’ll awaken to our essential divinity and cultivate a greater sense of wholeness.

Four Worlds of Kabbalah YA promo (2200 x 2200 px) (2200 x 2200 px)

Whether you are new to mindfulness or are a longtime spiritual seeker, this online course taught by Rebecca Schisler and Sam Feinsmith will explore a uniquely Jewish approach to meditation and mysticism that can support you to live, with greater awareness, resilience, and authenticity.

Through online materials and weekly live practice sessions, be part of a supportive community of practice growing habits of body, heart, mind, and spirit to foster personal and collective well-being and align with your deepest, most authentic self. All live sessions will be recorded and include closed captioning.

Learning about the Four Worlds of Kabbalah will support you in this process by helping you to:

Become more attuned and awake to your inner life in its richness and subtlety
Grow in awareness of your body, emotions, thoughts and spirit as gateways to spiritual living
Live with greater intentionality, awareness, and presence
Learn a foundational Kabbalistic map for the cultivating consciousness and well-being
Experience yourself as an innately divine being held in the embrace of unconditional love
Develop habits of heart, mind, and body that support your capacity to practice self-care, respond wisely and compassionately to life’s challenges, and thrive
Practice essential skills for cultivating and developing a personal Jewish spiritual practice grounded in mindfulness

Note: If you have already taken Awaken: Essential Jewish Mindfulness, this course will cover the same material with some adaptations and additions.

Register Now

IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

Abundance Level

$299

Register

Basic Level

$199

Register

Reduced Level

$99

Register

Meet Your Instructors:

Rebecca Schisler

Rebecca is a meditation teacher, artist, and Jewish educator. A devoted contemplative practitioner, she has led groups and taught classes and retreats with Or HaLev, Wilderness Torah, Pardes, Stanford School of Medicine, Urban Adamah, Hamakom, and the Awakened Heart Project. 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. Rebecca currently lives in the California Bay Area, where she maintains a lively studio art practice as the artist-in-residence at the JCC East Bay, loves to host Jewish gatherings of all kinds, and tries to lose herself among her neighboring redwood trees as much as possible. Learn more at www.rebeccaschisler.com.

Rabbi Sam Feinsmith

Rabbi Sam Feinsmith has been immersed in Jewish contemplative living, learning, and teaching for over twenty years, conducting Jewish meditation workshops, programs, and retreats for children, teens, Jewish educators, clergy, and community leaders. He’s passionate about practicing and teaching meditation and making the spiritual teachings of Hasidism available to all. He received an MA in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and rabbinic ordination from YCT Rabbinical School. He also trained as a Jewish mindfulness meditation teacher with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program. Sam lives on the land of the Council of the Three Fires – the Potowatami, Ojibwe, and Odawa tribes – currently known as Evanston, IL with his wife Sarah-Bess and daughter Elanit.

The Four Worlds of Kabbalah: A Mindfulness-Based Introduction

Jul 28, 2025

The Four Worlds of Kabbalah:

A Mindfulness-Based Introduction

October 22 – November 19, 2025

Five Live Zoom Sessions
Wednesdays, 3:00 – 4:15 PM ET

Click Here to Register

Join us for an accessible and practical introduction to mindful Jewish practice grounded in Jewish mysticism’s model of the “four worlds”—finding holiness in our bodies, emotions, thoughts, and spirit. Together, we’ll awaken to our essential divinity and help achieve a greater sense of wholeness. Whether you are new to mindfulness or are a longtime spiritual seeker, this online course will help you explore a uniquely Jewish approach to meditation and mysticism that can support you in living more holistically, with greater awareness, resilience, and authenticity. Through online materials and weekly live practice sessions, be part of a supportive community of practice, learn habits to foster personal and collective well-being, and align with your deepest, most authentic self.

Register Now

IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

Abundance Level

$299

Register

Basic Level

$199

Register

Reduced Level

$99

Register

Meet Your Instructors:

Rebecca Schisler

Rebecca is a meditation teacher, artist, and Jewish educator. A devoted contemplative practitioner, she has led groups and taught classes and retreats with Or HaLev, Wilderness Torah, Pardes, Stanford School of Medicine, Urban Adamah, Hamakom, and the Awakened Heart Project. 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. Rebecca currently lives in the California Bay Area, where she maintains a lively studio art practice as the artist-in-residence at the JCC East Bay, loves to host Jewish gatherings of all kinds, and tries to lose herself among her neighboring redwood trees as much as possible.

Rabbi Sam Feinsmith

Rabbi Sam Feinsmith has been immersed in Jewish contemplative living, learning, and teaching for over twenty years, conducting Jewish meditation workshops, programs, and retreats for children, teens, Jewish educators, clergy, and community leaders. He’s passionate about practicing and teaching meditation and making the spiritual teachings of Hasidism available to all. He received an MA in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and rabbinic ordination from YCT Rabbinical School. He also trained as a Jewish mindfulness meditation teacher with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training Program. Sam lives on the land of the Council of the Three Fires – the Potowatami, Ojibwe, and Odawa tribes – currently known as Evanston, IL with his wife Sarah-Bess and daughter Elanit.

Rodger Kamenetz Book Talk

Jul 28, 2025

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IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

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The Gift of Awareness

Jul 28, 2025

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN

Discover the Jewish Practice That Wakes You Up to the Magic and Meaning of Your Life

When is the last time you remember being fully present – not worrying about the past or anxiously planning for the future – just available to appreciate all the goodness of the moment?

It’s probably easier to recall the last time you arrived at work and then didn’t remember driving there. Or finishing a meal not having tasted a single bite.

Or being so preoccupied during a conversation with a friend, spouse or co-worker that you couldn’t really listen to them or remember anything they said.

If so, you’re not alone.

Today most of us regularly experience being so lost in our thoughts, distracted on our phones, and caught-up in our never-ending to-do lists that we aren’t really experiencing our lives in the present moment.

We have a tendency to think – and our culture reinforces – that doing more and achieving more is what will bring our lives into alignment with our core values and what matters most to us.

Access a More Relaxed, Restorative Way of Being That Offers a Deeper and More Meaningful Life Experience

You Can Start with Just 5 Minutes a Day

You may already recognize that you need some support managing your stress, being more present, reinvigorating your connection to Judaism, and skillfully navigating the challenges in your life and in the world.

You’ve likely heard mindfulness is helping others, but may not have figured out how to make it work for you. And you may not realize that you can practice mindfulness within a Jewish context . . . in a way that makes mindfulness accessible, familiar and perhaps even more meaningful to you—in addition to potentially creating new and possibly unexpected connections to Judaism itself.

That’s why the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, a global leader in teaching Jewish mindfulness and spiritual practices, has created The Gift of Awareness: Cultivating Mindfulness Through Jewish Meditation a first-of-its-kind, self-paced, online Jewish meditation course that offers new access to expanded awareness to support you in becoming more consistently who you want to be in the world . . . all from the comfort and convenience of your own home.

Here’s how it works . . . during The Gift of Awareness, mindfulness educators Rabbi Sam Feinsmith and Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell will expertly guide you each step of the way through establishing a Jewish mindfulness meditation practice that can support you in:

Showing up non-reactively in your life
Finding ways to deal skillfully with your inner critic
Finding an anchor of peace and positivity in stressful situations
Reawakening or deepening your connection to Judaism
Being a powerful example of resiliency, empathy and connection in your life and in the world

With regular practice – even for just 5 minutes a day – you can gain access to an inner refuge or sanctuary that you can take with you wherever you go . . .

So that no matter the circumstances you may find yourself in, no matter how stressful and strenuous your responsibilities may become, you can always discern a subtle quality of awareness hovering in the backdrop and permeating your experience of body, heart, mind and world.

Here’s What People Who’ve Established a Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Practice Tell Us About How It’s Transformed Their Lives

“Before I came to IJS and took the course, I thought my yoga meditation that I practiced before classes was all that there was to meditation. During the course, I experienced a deeper inner look into myself and was surprised that feelings of loss that I had suppressed surfaced. Now that I’ve experienced The Gift of Awareness, my life is calmer and I realize that I can live at a bit of a slower pace, be more aware and present, be a better listener, and still get the things done that matter to me.”

Marlene Aron

“IJS has changed my life. I know it sounds dramatic. But I want everyone to know what I now know – our Jewish Hassidic wisdom has deepened my prayer, my meditation and my mindset. Even more essentially, because of IJS I have changed the way I speak to myself, which has changed everything.”

Aliza Kline

“Jewish spiritual practice has made me so much more spiritually alive. It inspired me. Refreshed me. Many of us go to yoga, meditate and are looking for spiritual practices to help us in our lives. What I didn’t know is that I could do all of that within the context of Jewish prayer and tradition—and that it would be so much more meaningful as a result.”

Rabbi Rachel Timoner

The Gift of Awareness
A Session-by-Session Course Overview

Here’s a closer look at everything you’ll cover:

Every module is between 30 and 45 minutes in length, and includes:

Video teachings with Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell
A text study with Rabbi Sam Feinsmith
A guided meditation
A mindful life practice
Reflection questions and discussion forums
A supplemental handout

Each session builds on the next so that you feel relaxed, inspired, and confident in each new skill before moving onto the next.

Module One:

Waking Up to Your Life
From Automatic Pilot to Intention

Module Two:

Strengthening Attention
From Distracted to Present

Module Three:

Listening to Your Body
From Thinking to Sensing

Once you have finished the first three modules you may notice . . .

You’ve begun moving through your life more intentionally, instead of being on automatic pilot
You find it easier to anchor your attention to be more present
You’ve become better able to notice your mental habits and unsupportive thought patterns that habitually move you into reactivity and away from feeling calm and centered.

Module Four:

Turning Towards the Stream of Your Emotions
From Reactivity to Responsiveness

Module Five:

Working with Difficult Emotions
From Avoidance to Approaching

Once you have finished Modules Four and Five you may notice . . .

You’re better able to identify emotions in your body, such as “Oh, I must be feeling sadness because there’s sensation in the pit of my stomach” or “My face is flushing, which means I’m feeling angry.”
You’re more in tune with your emotions and able to know precisely what you’re feeling moment by moment, instead of having only a vague sense of ease or uneasiness.
You’re more able to cultivate non-judgemental attention to your own emotions, allowing you to be more responsive instead of getting stuck in emotionality and reactivity.

Module Six:

Befriending Your Own Mind
From Conviction to Curiosity

Module Seven:

Cultivating Your Loving Heart
From Judgment to Compassion

Module Eight:

Resting in Shabbat Mind™
From Doing to Being

Once you have finished Module Six you may notice . . .

You’re more able to be the observer of your thoughts and the student of your habits instead of believing those thoughts and habits are what define you.
As you realize more clearly that you’re not actually your thoughts and mental habits, you become more in touch with who you really are.

Once you have finished Module Seven you may notice . . .

You’re better able to cultivate loving emotions when you need them — the kind of emotions that open the heart and leave the mind feeling spacious and connected.
You’re better able to skillfully handle emotions (like anger) that distort your ability to see clearly.

Once you have finished Module Eight you may notice . . .

You’re better able to de-stress, regulate and strengthen your attention, and practice emotional self-regulation.
You feel more resourced, restored and supported as you do your work and live your life.
You’re able to meet others (and yourself) with a deeper quality of love, compassion and acceptance.
You have access in any moment to what Shabbat represents — peaceful awareness that you need to do nothing else or be anywhere else.
That practice grounded in Jewish wisdom has changed your relationship with Judaism and possibly even God.

Course Materials and Resources

When you register, you’ll get access to everything you need to take full advantage of the self-paced course, including:

8 self-paced video teaching sessions, guided meditation “practices” and reflection questions – that you can access anywhere, anytime from your computer or mobile device.
Downloadable handouts for each module – so you can reference these powerful teachings anytime.
An online meditation timer you can load with your favorite guided meditations from the course – so you can practice them again and again.
8 “Mindful Life” practices – designed to help you integrate the course teachings into your everyday life.
A personal online journal – your own personal space to record your reflections.

The Gift of Awareness

Course Tuition

$249

Purchase to get access to everything you need
to take full advantage of this self-paced course

Register Now

About Rabbi Sam Feinsmith

As Senior Core Faculty at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Rabbi Sam Feinsmith directs the Clergy Leadership Program and teaches on the faculty of a variety of IJS programs. Previously, he taught Judaic Studies at Chicagoland Jewish High School, Illinois, and the Heschel School in NY, where he spearheaded initiatives to foster teen spirituality, mindfulness, and wellness. He is a co-founder of Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning, a center for contemplative Jewish learning and living. He served as a Kol Tzedek Fellow for American Jewish World Service, volunteering in Cambodia with their Volunteer Corps.

About Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell

Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell is a teacher of Jewish mindfulness and has spent years leading retreats and immersive experiences for adults in various settings through the National Ramah Commission, Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Jordan was the founding Director of Ramah Beyond and was Director of Camp Ramah in Canada from 2019-2022. Previously, he worked for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) as a teacher of Jewish Mindfulness and as Director of the Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training. Jordan also taught meditation to rabbis and cantors through IJS’ Clergy Leadership Program. After being ordained in 2008, Jordan served as a congregational rabbi outside of Chicago and co-founded Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning. Jordan is a recipient of the 2014 Covenant Foundation Pomegranate Prize. He and his wife Yael live in Toronto and are the proud and grateful parents of three.

About the Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Since 1999, IJS has been a leader in teaching traditional and contemporary Jewish spiritual practices that cultivate mindfulness so that each of us might act with enriched wisdom, clarity, and compassion. These practices, grounded in Jewish values and thought, enable participants to develop important skills while strengthening leadership capacities, deepening their inner lives, and connecting more meaningfully with others, Judaism, and the sacred. As a non-profit organization, IJS is able to provide programming and resources to the community thanks to the generosity of our donors.

The Gift of Awareness for Educators

Jul 28, 2025

Awareness in Action

Jul 28, 2025

Registration Now Open

Click Here to Register Now

Learn The Jewish Spiritual Practice

That Helps You Show Up More Often as Your “Best Self”

In challenging times like these—marked by political turbulence, rising antisemitism, war, and the climate crisis—we all can be reactive and defensive rather than our best selves. Flooded by our emotions, too often we may regret our words and actions, wishing we might have paused and responded more wisely.

Judaism has a spiritual practice specifically for times like these: tikkun middot, an ancient Jewish practice for developing desirable character traits and aligning our actions with our most deeply held values. Tikkun middot practice integrates basic principles of Jewish mindfulness with close attention to essential character or “soul” traits like loving connection, humility, gratitude, and the discipline to set wise boundaries. Each of us possesses these traits, but our innate spiritual and ethical qualities can become blocked, causing us to behave in ways that miss the mark.

The Institute for Jewish Spirituality invites you to join Awareness in Action: Cultivating Character through Mindfulness and Middot, a self-paced online course to help you uncover your authentic best self and be the person you wish to be.

In this course, you’ll learn skills that can be applied in both the small and large actions of daily life: in difficult conversations, in interactions with family and friends, in traffic, and in meetings—whenever life is particularly challenging. You’ll learn to access and practice eight core character or “soul” traits (middot), each of which builds upon and integrates those that precede it:

1. Loving connection (chesed)
2. Setting wise boundaries for yourself and others (gevurah)
3. A balanced self – taking up appropriate space and time (anavah)
4. Energetic response – so you can get started and keep going (zerizut)
5. Gratitude (hodayah)
6. Righteousness – developing your capacity to do what is appropriate and just (tzedek)
7. Mindful speech (sh’mirat hadibbur)
8. Trustworthiness (emunah)

Practice your soul traits to bring mindfulness practice more deeply into your life.

Expert instructors Rabbi Marc Margolius and Rabbi Lisa Goldstein will guide you each step of the way to establish a tikkun middot practice that can support you in:

Growing in self-awareness and gaining better insight into your deeper motivations and habitual patterns
Becoming less reactive and more responsive—better able to access the innate wisdom in your body, mind, and soul
Developing the freedom to choose how you want to act
Experiencing Jewish spiritual practice as a path to personal transformation.

Here’s what participants have told us about the difference this course made in their lives

“I’ve heard the phrase, “living an examined life”, many times. But not until I began to participate in tikkun middot practice with IJS did I truly recognize the wisdom of this worldview, and gain the tools to put it into action. Now I am constantly surprised by how often I notice situations arising in which I apply middot to my experiences and responses. And this knowledge has a cumulative effect: the more middot I internalize, the more it enriches my life — personally, professionally, and communally.”

Dan Kaplan

Evanston, IL

“Tikkun middot practice weaves Jewish wisdom through my day to day life, helping me meet situations that I used to find baffling and confusing. It may sound like hyperbole, but now that I’ve been practicing regularly, I experience miracles everywhere. Consistently, no matter what presents as a challenge in my life — from the simplest irritants to the most triggering situations — this practice helps me regulate my internal chaos and remember that my awareness is within me, a light that never goes out.”

Cantor Meredith Greenberg

Montclair NJ

Awareness in Action
A Session-by-Session Course Overview

Here’s a closer look at everything you’ll cover:

Every module is between 30 and 45 minutes in length, and includes:

- Video teachings and guided “real life” scenarios with Rabbi Marc Margolius, Rabbi Tamara Cohen, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, and Rabbi Aaron Weininger.
- A teaching from a related Jewish text with Rabbi Lisa Goldstein
- A professionally recorded chant and sample “focus phrases” (a reminder to practice during the day)
- A supplemental handout with reflection and journaling questions

Module One

Loving Connection: Chesed
Open up to loving connection, especially in challenging situations.

Module Two

Setting wise boundaries: Gevurah
Being loving and generous—but not to the extent you are doing a disservice to family, friends, colleagues, or yourself.

Module Three

Centering in a balanced self: Avanah
Taking up the right amount of space in the world—neither too much nor too little.

Module Four

Channeling an energetic response: Zerizut
Accessing the energy you need to either get going—or keep going.

Module Five

Experiencing gratitude: Hodayah
Accepting life on its own terms and rejoicing about what is true at this moment, just as it is.

Module Six

Letting Righteousness Flow: Tzedek
Developing your capacity to do what is right and just—with compassion opening new channels through which righteousness can flow.

Module Seven

Mindful speech: Sh’mirat Hadibbur
Applying mindfulness to all of your communications so that they reflect your best self.

Module Eight

Generating Trustworthiness: Emunah
Consistently showing-up for yourself and others.

Once you have finished the eight modules you may notice . . .

Some of the eight traits (middot) have been easier for you to incorporate into your life than others. There is plenty of time to go back and focus on the ones you found more challenging. In fact, we encourage going back through all eight.
You are learning which support tools are most helpful for you… is it humming a chant throughout your day; posting a “focus phrase” on your refrigerator or laptop screen; and/or checking-in with a practice partner three times per week.
You’re becoming more skilled at noticing when you are about to go down a habitual path that is out of alignment with how you want to be in the world—and sometimes doing something different. (It takes practice!)
You’re increasingly able to meet others (and yourself) with a deeper quality of love, compassion and acceptance.

Course Materials and Resources

This course is appropriate for beginners as well as more experienced meditators and mindfulness practitioners. While the concepts and practices are framed in Jewish terms, no prior Judaic knowledge is assumed or necessary.

When you register, you’ll get access to everything you need to take full advantage of the self-paced course, including:

Eight sets of self-paced video teaching sessions – that you can access anywhere, anytime from your computer or mobile device.
Eight guided “Mindful Life” practice scenarios – designed to help you integrate the course teachings into your everyday life.
Eight teachings from Jewish texts – that will provide a Jewish frame and additional insights into the character trait (middah).
Eight downloadable chants – one for each module, professionally recorded by Cantor Julia Cadrain with Elana Arian or Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, to help you integrate the character trait (middah) into your life through music.
Downloadable handouts for each module – so you can reference these teachings anytime.
Additional resources for each middah, including poems and playlists.
A personal online journal – your own personal space to record your reflections.
Online study/practice partners – so you can share your experience with like-minded others on a similar path.

Awareness in Action

IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

Abundance Level

$399

Register Now

Basic Level

$299

Register Now

Supported Level

$149

Register Now

Meet the course instructors:

Rabbi Marc Margolius

Rabbi Marc Margolius directs programming for lay leaders and alumni of the IJS clergy leadership training program, as well as the Tikkun Middot Project, which integrates Jewish mindfulness with middot (character trait) practice. He hosts IJS’s daily mindfulness meditation sessions and teaches an online program, Awareness in Action: Cultivating Character through Mindfulness and Middot. Previously, Marc served as rabbi at West End Synagogue in Manhattan.

Rabbi Lisa Goldstein

Lisa is a master teacher of Jewish-based mindfulness practices. She first came to IJS as a participant in the rabbinic leadership program and meditation teacher training. She served as the Executive Director of IJS, where, in addition to management responsibilities, she also taught at retreats and meditation programs. Educated at Brown University and Hebrew Union College, she previously served as the director of Hillel of San Diego, where she was recognized as an “Exemplar of Excellence.” Lisa She lives in New York City with her husband and foster son.

Rabbi Tamara Cohen

Rabbi Tamara Cohen is an educator and liturgist who has been using innovative ritual and feminist creative practice to bring Jews and their fellow travelers into deeper connection with themselves, their communities, Judaism and the Sacred, for over twenty-five years. As a partnered queer white anti-racist parent of two boys and a senior leader at Moving Traditions, a national organization that works to support the thriving of Jewish adolescents and their families, she brings a keen awareness of the spiritual challenges and blessings of daily life for people who care for others within their own families while also being engaged in and committed to the need for the larger systemic changes that would make care and repair easier to center and access. Tamara’s writing can be found in The Journey Continues: The Ma’yan Feminist Haggadah, Siddur Lev Shalem and ritualwell.org. She is blessed to live with her family at the edge of Carpenter’s Woods in Philadelphia.

Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife

Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife (she/they pronouns) sprinkles sparkles, disrupts expectations, and offers blessings wherever she goes. She serves as Oreget Kehilah (Executive Director) of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute, Founding Kohenet of Kesher Pittsburgh and Program Director of the ALEPH Kesher Fellowship and also enjoys working with Keshet and Beloved Builders. Additionally, she delights in serving as a davennatrix (shlichat tzibbur), life spiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, teacher, facilitator, liturgist and songstress. Her work in these realms is informed by her lived experience as a queer, bi-racial, Jewish Woman, her belief that Book, Body and Earth are equal sources of wisdom, and the quandries she encounters as a scholar of the Orphan Wisdom School. Keshira received Kohenet smicha in 2017 and earned her BS 2000 and MS 2001 at Carnegie Mellon University. After many years of traveling and living in Australia, she and her beloved once again make their home on Osage and Haudenosaunee land, also called Pittsburgh, PA.

Rabbi Aaron Weininger

Rabbi Aaron Weininger joined Adath Jeshurun Congregation in 2012, upon receiving rabbinic ordination and an MA in Hebrew Letters from the Jewish Theological Seminary. He holds the Berman Family Chair in Jewish Learning. Aaron earned his BA at Washington University in St. Louis. In 2007 he became the first openly gay person admitted to rabbinical school in the Conservative movement of Judaism. That experience taught him the power of listening at the margins rather than pulling people into whatever the center is at that moment, and he is attuned to the spark each person brings to Torah, prayer, and acts of kindness in the warmth of community.

Meet the musicians and vocalists:

Elana Arian

Musician and Vocalist

Cantor Julia Cadrain

Vocalist

Rabbi Sam Feinsmith

Musician and Vocalist