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?
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
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- Understand the culturally pervasive dynamics of anti-Jewish oppression in the context of other systemic oppressions.
The Dynamics of Ancestral Jewish Trauma
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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.“
“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.”
“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.”
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
Basic Level
$249
Reduced Level
$149
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.
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).
