Sitting with the Sefirot:
A Kabbalistic Journey for Deepening Your Jewish Mindfulness Meditation PracticeFebruary 3 – June 9, 2026
Live Sessions: Tuesdays, 3:30-4:45pm ET
Do you have a regular, ongoing meditation practice? Would you like to deepen your practice in a Jewish spiritual framework?
IJS is delighted to offer a live course, back by popular demand: Sitting with the Sefirot: A Kabbalistic Journey for Deepening Your Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Practice.
Taught by senior core faculty member Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, this course will help you take your daily meditation practice to the next level through the Kabbalah’s mystical sefirot — lenses to help us cultivate consciousness and reveal the sublime Oneness of Being.
This course is designed for individuals who maintain a consistent meditation practice.
In two-to-three-week units, you will systematically explore each of the seven lower sefirot as a foundation to:
- Expand your capacity to feel held in a field of infinite divine love
- Strengthen your discipline in practice
- Develop greater attentional balance
- Stabilize your meditative concentration
- Practice devekut, intimate connection with the Divine
- Cultivate nondual awareness, uncovering the Oneness of Being and recognizing your innate wholeness
- Take your practice into your daily life to support wise, compassionate action
The sefirot provide a systematic, dynamic structure and Jewish spiritual framework for deepening our meditation practice skills while connecting to Jewish wisdom—all in the context of a supportive, online community of practice.
The option to select a chevruta (practice partner) will be available.
Learn how to recognize your own divinity and live in alignment with your deepest, most genuine nature
Curriculum
The program consists of two-to-three-week units per sefirah, with an opening introductory session and a closing wrap-up session to frame the course. A minimum of 30 minutes of each weekly session will be dedicated to sitting meditation practice. The units are as follows:
Session 1
Mochin and Middot
Mochin and Middot: Spiritual awareness (da’at) as a foundation for cultivating wholeness and balance
This session includes an orientation to the entire structure of the ten sefirot and how we’re going to use the seven lower sefirot to channel,focus, and cultivate the light of awareness as we practice meditation.
Sessions 2-3
Chesed
Chesed (Expansive Love): Divine love fills the world—deepening our capacity to recognize our true nature as innately loving and expansive
In this unit we learn how to feel held in a field of limitless divine love and compassion and open our hearts more readily—with warmhearted curiosity—to the full spectrum of our experience.
Sessions 4-5
Gevurah
Gevurah (Strength, Discipline): Channeling the light—deepening our discipline in practice
Having cultivated a sense of expansive divine love, we now give that love shape, direction, and focus by channeling it through the container of gevurah. In so doing, we bring our attention to how we hold our posture, relate to the wandering mind, and establish rituals and routines that support us to cultivate greater regularity and steadiness in our practice, especially in the midst of daily life.
Sessions 6-7
Tiferet
Tiferet (Beautiful Balance): Not too tight, not too loose—cultivating attentional balance
In this unit we learn to identify imbalances in the body and mind, and find the balance point that allows our posture and attention to be relaxed yet engaged, expansive yet focused. Such a quality of balanced attention supports us to deepen our concentration and clarity in the unit that follows.
Sessions 8-10
Netzach
Netzach (Eternity, Victory): One breath at a time—deepening concentration and right effort
In this unit we learn helpful tips for stabilizing our single-pointed, meditative concentration, and brightening and pacifying the mind when it falls to either extreme of either dullness or agitation. We also explore the importance of right effort in maintaining our meditative concentration. In doing so, we are able to overcome coarse distractions and remain attentive to our meditation object uninterruptedly for longer and longer periods.
Sessions 11-12
Hod
Hod (Acknowledgment, Surrender): Bittul hayesh (releasing the self)—resting in devekut (connection with the Divine) and surrender, the practice of non-effort
As a complement to the work of developing right effort in the previous unit, in this unit we learn how to release effort altogether and surrender to the light and wisdom of the soul through the practice of devekut. Learning how to rest in the innate luminosity of the mind, we learn the meditation practice of non-meditation.
Sessions 13-14
Yesod
Yesod (Foundation, Connection): Cultivating connection—unifying body and spirit
Grounded in nondual awareness, we learn how to dissolve the supposed boundaries between body and spirit, subject and object, and experience the singular Divine Reality even as we engage with the objects of this world.
Sessions 15-16
Malkhut
Malkhut (Sovereignty, Agency): God in immanence—mindful action
In this unit we learn how to engage in a practice of discernment that enables us to act mindfully in the world and make choices from a grounding in our innate wisdom, clarity, and compassion rather than the ego.
Session 17
Integration
Integration and wrap-up
In this session we have an opportunity to review our arc of learning and practice, and harvest any key insights we can take into our meditation practice and lives beyond the course.
Live Sessions
Rabbi Sam Feinsmith of the IJS senior core faculty will teach this course through 17 live sessions on Zoom. All sessions will be recorded for those who cannot attend. Live sessions will take place on Tuesdays, 3:30-4:45pm ET on the following dates:
Feb 3, 17, 24, March 2 (Monday), 10, 17, 30 (Monday),
April 7, 14, 21, 28, May 5, 12, 19, 26, June 2, 9
Registration Closes February 2, 2025
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
$449
Basic Level
$349
Reduced Level
$249
This course is designed for individuals who maintain a consistent meditation practice. If you are interested in our beginner or open level offerings, we invite you to learn more about The Gift of Awareness and our Free Offerings.
Meet Your Instructor:
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 other programs. He 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, and spiritual leaders. He’s passionate about practicing and teaching Jewish meditation and making the spiritual teachings of Hasidism available to all. Sam lives with his wife Sarah-Bess and daughter Elanit on the land of the Council of the Three Fires – the Potowatami, Ojibwe, and Odawa tribes – currently known as Evanston, IL.
