Amukah: V’zot HaTorah, This is the Torah

Torah Study as Mindful Jewish Practice

October 14, 2026 – April 14, 2027

Rabbi Sam Feinsmith and Rabbi Marc Margolius

Wednesdays, 3:00-4:15pm ET | October 2026 – April 2027 on Zoom
2026: October 14, 21, 28, November 4, 11, (off 11/18, 11/25), December 2, 9, 16, 23 (off 12/30)
2027: January 6, 13, 20, 27, February 3, 10, 17, 24, March 3, 10, (off 3/17), 24, 31, April 7, 14

Course at a Glance

Elevate your Torah study into a vibrant, embodied spiritual practice. Led by Rabbis Sam Feinsmith and Marc Margolius, this six-month cohort grounds the traditional mystical framework of PaRDeS (the four layers of text interpretation) with a mindfulness lens to “read our lives as Torah.” This course is for anyone who wants to deepen inner awareness, explore the mythic power of sacred texts, and cultivate mindful habits, all within our intimate community of ongoing practice.

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More About This Program

Amukah (Hebrew for “Deep”) is a cohort program for our Sustainers intended to create a supportive, intimate community of ongoing practice. This year’s offering for Amukah will be “V’zot HaTorah, This is the Torah: Torah Study as Mindful Jewish Practice,” a six-month online program inviting participants into a deeper, contemplative exploration of Torah and our daily lives.

Rabbis Sam Feinsmith and Marc Margolius will lead us in this work through the fourfold framework known as PaRDeS – a traditional mystical Jewish system for studying and interpreting sacred text that can help us mindfully study and interpret our human experience. An acronym of the first letters of four Hebrew words, PaRDeS translates as “orchard” or “paradise.” It references four distinct layers of meaning, from the literal sense to the deeply mystical, and transforms Torah study from an intellectual endeavor into a vibrant, embodied experience of stepping into a lush garden for cultivating mindful habits of heart and mind.

Torah study can be understood as a Jewish spiritual practice for cultivating spiritual awareness of different yet interconnected gradations of consciousness. We will explore how reading Torah through the multiple, interrelated mindfulness lenses of PaRDeS can deepen our capacity to similarly “read our lives” as Torah, deepening our appreciation of the Torah’s connection to our inner lives and its role in shaping our words and actions. We will also grow in our appreciation of the mythic power of core Torah texts as a powerful tool for framing and deepening our experience.

Curriculum

The primary framework for our study and practice will be the PaRDeS rubric for reading and interpreting Torah, which describes four “lenses” by which we might cultivate four gradations of consciousness:

Peshat (“plain”): the simple or literal level in which we ask “what is this,” applying beginner’s mind and deep curiosity, attending to details in text and self.

Remez (“hint”): the level of allegory, text pointing to philosophical insight/eternal truths, attending to what lies beneath the surface and to shades of meaning.

Drash (“seeking”): the level of making connections, discerning patterns, noticing links between different parts of text and self; connective mind.

Sod (“secret”): the level of mystery, discerning and experiencing all aspects of text and self as manifestations of a spiritual source.

We will explore how we might understand each lens of the PaRDeS framework as a “disposition” or aspect of mindfulness practice, based upon the approach of Michael Fishbane in his Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology. Once we have been introduced to these four lenses, we will apply them over two units to two central, archetypal Torah narratives: the Divine call to Abram in parashat Lekh-Lekha, and Sulam Ya’akov, Jacob’s dream of a ladder connecting heaven and earth. At the same time, we will use the PaRDeS framework as a lens on our daily experience and spiritual journey. Our process will culminate in a closing unit in which we will compose and share our personal spiritual autobiography, the “Torah of our lives.”

After completing this course you may notice…

You have language, a framework, and an ongoing practice for witnessing the multiple dimensions of your daily life, from the mundane to the profound.
You will have a deeper personal relationship with the text of Torah.
You will be able to continue to engage in talmud Torah as something more than an intellectual pursuit.

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

Abundance Level

$1,999

Basic Level

$1,499

Meet Your Instructors:

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.

Rabbi Marc Margolius

Rabbi Marc Margolius serves as advisor for overall programming for IJS, and directs programming for lay leaders as well as Hevraya, the alumni of our Clergy Leadership Program. He hosts the “Daily Sit,” IJS’s online daily mindfulness meditation sessions, and teaches courses for IJS, 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. 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.