Sacred Response-Ability
Mindfulness and Middot for the Omer (for 20s and 30s)Your Best Self, In Action
Counting the Omer with A Special Edition Shevet Cohort
The world is a lot right now. Your inner world doesn’t have to be.
Practice with Rebecca Schisler and Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife
April 9, 16, 23, 30, May 7, 14, 21
Thursdays from 8:00-9:15 pm ET
(On 5/21: 4:00-5:15pm ET)
Between career shifts, complex relationships, and a 24/7 news cycle, it’s easy to feel reactive instead of intentional. But what if you had a toolkit to help you navigate life’s “choice points” with more grace, wisdom and intention?
We’re combining the deep, character-building wisdom of Tikkun Middot with the warm and welcoming vibes of our young adult Shevet community.
This special edition of this tikkun middot practice encompasses the Omer – the seven week period in the Jewish calendar beginning on Passover, traditionally a time for working on our character qualities. Each one of these qualities is associated with the Sefirot – divine emanations sourced from Jewish mysticism that we are encouraged to engage on a spiritual level during this revelatory and healing time between Passover and Shavuot.
Is This For Me?
- You are under 40.
- You want to be less reactive and more responsive.
- You’re seeking a Jewish framework to guide a regular practice of self-reflection and character cultivation.
- You want to practice in community with other young adults who are asking the same big questions.
- You’re ready to “get out of your own way” and show up as your best self.
The instructors will support participants in cultivating their ability to respond to the world in a more grounded, skillful, and compassionate way, growing more conscious of habitual reactivity and learning to respond instead with wise words and actions. The program consists of seven modules with live sessions, guided meditations, chants/songs, poetry, music, and practical, accessible guidance for daily practice—all drawing from the traits of Lovingkindness, Gratitude, Wise Judgment, and more.
In Sacred Response-Ability, you’ll learn how to access and practice seven core character or “soul” traits (middot), each of which builds upon and integrates those which precede it:
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- Loving connection (Chesed)
- Setting wise boundaries for yourself and others (Gevurah)
- A balanced self – taking up appropriate space and time (Anavah)
- Energetic response – so you can get started and keep going (Zerizut)
- Gratitude (Hodayah)
- Righteousness – developing your capacity to do what is appropriate and just (Tzedek)
- Trustworthiness (Emunah)
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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
$199
Basic Level
$149
Reduced Level
$99
Meet Your Instructors:
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 is a Core Faculty Member with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality; she also enjoys working with Jewish Studio Project and Kirva among other national Jewish organisations. Additionally, she delights in serving as a facilitator, teacher, life spiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, shlichat tzibbur, liturgist and songstress. Her work in these realms is informed by her lived experience as a queer, bi-racial, child-free Jewish person living with chronic illness, 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.
Rebecca Schisler
Rebecca is a core faculty member at IJS, where she directs young adult programming and created and steers the Shevet Jewish Mindfulness Community, a space for folks in or near their twenties and thirties to dive deep into Jewish spirituality and mindfulness practice in online and virtual spaces. Additionally, she creates and curates content for IJS social media and frequently teaches on retreats and multi-week online programs.
Rebecca is honored to serve on this faculty after years of leading groups and teaching classes and retreats with Or HaLev, Pardes, Wilderness Torah, Stanford School of Medicine, Hillel at Stanford, Urban Adamah, Hamakom, and the Awakened Heart Project. 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.