Mindful Civic Engagement
Spiritual Qualities for Wise ResponseOctober 15 – November 19, 2026
Rabbi Marc Margolius and Guest Teachers:
Rabbis Sharon Brous, David Ingber, Sharon Kleinbaum, Rachel Timoner, Isaiah Rothstein, and journalist/author Yossi Klein Halevi.
5 Live Sessions, Thursdays, 2:00-3:15 PM ET
October 15, 22, 29, November 5, 12, 19
Course at a Glance
Dive into this six-week program that uses Jewish mindfulness and the study of middot (sacred spiritual character traits) to transform stress into wise, effective civic engagement aligned with Jewish tradition. Our lineup includes some of the most notable and well-respected teachers, making this course accessible for all, from beginners to seasoned learners.
Course Description
In turbulent, chaotic times such as these, strong emotions can push us to retreat and shut down – or to react unwisely or ineffectively. But Jewish mindfulness practice and tradition can help us stay present and respond wisely, as our better selves, even under stress. Join us to explore how Jewish spiritual practice and wisdom can help us engage the “better angels of our nature” to show up and respond more effectively to the pressing issues of our time, and more often act and speak in alignment with the highest aspects of Jewish spiritual tradition.
Curriculum and Featured Guests
Each week will focus on a specific middah – a fundamental Jewish spiritual trait which can spur and shape our words and actions to help us stay engaged and meet this moment wisely. The program will feature weekly live sessions, each session featuring a major, distinguished Jewish spiritual teacher as a “guest expert” in that week’s middah. Rabbi Margolius will offer written materials for each weekly middah, including guided meditations, and suggestions for mindfulness practice of the middah.
Emunah (Steadfastness): Faithfully Showing Up as Civic Engagement
Gevurah (Strength): Setting Boundaries in Civic Engagement
Guest: Rabbi Sharon Brous, Founder and Senior Rabbi of IKAR, Los Angeles, and author of national best-seller The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World.
Guest: Rabbi David Ingber, Founder and Senior Rabbi of Romemu, and Senior Director for Jewish Life and Senior Director of the Bronfman Center at the 92d Street Y (NYC).
Simchah (Joy): The Centrality of Joy in Civic Engagement
Ahavah (Love): Rooting Civic Engagement in Love
Guest: Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, Rabbi Emerita of Cong. Beit Simchat Torah (NYC) and Director, The Beacon: Shine the Light (Union Theological Seminary).
Guest: Rabbi Rachel Timoner, Senior Rabbi, Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn and author of Breath of Life: God as Spirit in Judaism.
Emet (Truth): Staying Grounded in Truth
Hatmadah: Staying the Course in Civic Engagement
Guest: Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein, Rabbinic Scholar and Public Affairs Advisor at Jewish Federations of North America and the Senior Rabbi at the Greenpoint Shul, Brooklyn, NY.
Guest: Yossi Klein Halevi, journalist, best-selling author, and Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.
Here’s What Participants Have Told Us About How IJS Courses Transformed Their Lives
A great relief in the discovery of a more sustainable process of letting go of the burden of uncertainty and impermanence. Thank you, Rabbi Marc and the other Rabbis of the Shofar project.
I am so grateful to IJS! I have loved all the IJS programs I am involved with and am looking forward to a year of Torah study. The daily sits are wonderful, and I very much appreciate Rabbi Marc and also Rabbi Josh, and all the amazing teachers like Rabbi Sam who just offered an exceptional week of wisdom. I am also grateful to all the IJS staff including the tech support.
This was my second experience with Awareness in Action. Although I missed a few sessions due to conflicting obligations, I loved each session I attended. Rabbi Margolius is an inspired teacher. He made the learning so applicable to our lives.
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 Marc Margolius
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.
Rabbi Sharon Brous
Sharon Brous is the senior and founding rabbi of IKAR, a leading edge Jewish community based in Los Angeles, and author of The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Mend Our Broken Hearts and World, a national bestseller.
Brous offered the invocation at the Democratic National Convention in 2024, led the Hanukkah candle lighting with the Vice President and Second Gentleman in 2023, and the White House Passover Seder in 2021. She blessed President Biden and Vice President Harris at the Inaugural National Prayer Service in 2021, and in 2013, she blessed President Obama and Vice President Biden. She was named #1 on the Newsweek/The Daily Beast list of most influential Rabbis in America, and has been recognized by The Forward and Jerusalem Post as among the most influential Jews alive today. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post, and her 2016 TED talk, “Reclaiming Religion,” has been viewed by more than 1.5 million people.
Brous is in the inaugural cohort of Auburn Seminary‘s Senior Fellows program, which unites top faith leaders working on the frontlines for justice, she sits on the faculty of REBOOT, and serves on the International Council of the New Israel Fund and national steering committee for the Poor People’s Campaign.
A graduate of Columbia University (both undergraduate and M.A. in Human Rights), she was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary and lives in Los Angeles with her husband and children.
Rabbi David Ingber
Rabbi David A. Ingber serves as the founding rabbi of Romemu, the largest Renewal synagogue in the United States and as the Senior Director of Jewish Life and the Bronfman Center at 92NY. Rabbi Ingber founded Romemu in NYC in 2006, following his ordination by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Founder of the Jewish Renewal movement. Over the past decade plus, Romemu has grown into a weekly home for thousands of people, a growing membership of over 1,000 in its two physical locations (Manhattan and Brooklyn) and a growing online global membership. Rabbi Ingber also founded Romemu Yeshiva, the first fully egalitarian Yeshiva (immersive learning center), dedicated to mystical and meditative Jewish learning and practice.
Raised Modern Orthodox in New York, Rabbi Ingber studied at Ramaz, Yeshiva University, Beit Midrash L’Torah, Yeshivat Chaim Berlin, and Yeshivat Chovovei Torah Rabbinical School. He also studied philosophy, psychology and religion at New York University.
Rabbi Ingber’s distinct approach to Torah, rabbinical teaching, and ritualistic practice is informed by his own personal seeking and learning from a wide cross-section of sacred traditions and faiths. He is enlightened by Jewish mysticism and Hasidut, fusing these beliefs with those of other ancient philosophies and world views. Particular influences include 18th Century Kabbalist and Founder of Hasidut, Rabbi Yisrael Ba’al Shem Tov; the great 19th Century Ishbitzer Rebbe, R. Mordechai Leiner; and leading 20th Century thinkers from Kabbalist, Rav Abraham Isaac Kook to psychologist, Carl Jung.
Rabbi Ingber was named by Newsweek as one of the top 50 most influential rabbis in the United States as well as by The Forward as one of the 50 most newsworthy and notable Jews in America. A major 21st Century Jewish thinker and educator, his rich perspective, open heart and mind, and full-bodied approach to Jewish learning has brought him to speak worldwide. He serves on the faculty for the Wexner Heritage Program, and the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and Israel, and was an AJWS Global Justice Fellow. Rabbi Ingber has lectured extensively on the topics of spirituality, theology, Jewish mysticism, prayer, and meditation.
Yossi Klein Halevi
Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Together with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, he co-directs the Institute’s Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), which teaches emerging young Muslim American leaders about Judaism, Jewish identity and Israel.
Halevi’s 2013 book, Like Dreamers, won the Jewish Book Council’s Everett Book of the Year Award. His latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, is a New York Times bestseller. He writes for leading op-ed pages in the US, including the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and is a former contributing editor to the New Republic.
His 2001 book, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew’s Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land, will be reissued in 2019 by HarperCollins.
His first book, Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist, tells the story of his teenage years as a follower of the militant rightwing rabbi Meir Kahane, and his subsequent disillusionment with Jewish radicalism. The New York Times called it “a book of burning importance.”
In 2013 he was a visiting professor of Israel Studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and served as a writer in residence at the University of Illinois. He was a senior fellow at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem from 2004 until 2010. Born in Brooklyn, he moved to Israel in 1982, and lives in Jerusalem with wife, Sarah, who helps run a center for Jewish meditation.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum served for 32 years as Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City, the largest LGBTQ+ synagogue in the world — for people of all sexual identities and genders — where she is now Senior Rabbi Emerita. Rabbi Kleinbaum was installed as CBST’s first rabbi in 1992, arriving at the height of the AIDS crisis when the synagogue was in desperate need of pastoral care and spiritual leadership.
Rabbi Kleinbaum guided the CBST congregation through loss and change while addressing social issues and building a strong and deeply spiritual community. Under her leadership, CBST became a powerful voice in the movement for equality and justice for people of all sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and a significant force challenging the radical right’s dominance over religious and political life in the United States and around the world.
For many years, Rabbi Kleinbaum has been ranked by Newsweek among the 50 most influential rabbis in America. The BBC also named her one of its 100 Women of 2024. She has long been involved in the fight for human rights for all people. Rabbi Kleinbaum was appointed by President Biden as a Commissioner to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom. She is a Commissioner on New York City’s Commission on Human Rights, and served on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Faith Based Advisory Council. Rabbi Kleinbaum is also a member of the Executive Committee of Governor Hochul’s Office of Faith and Non-Profit Development Services.
Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein
Isaiah Joseph Rothstein is the Senior Rabbi of the Greenpoint Shul and also serves as Rabbinic Scholar and Public Affairs Advisor at the Jewish Federations of North America, where he is the founder of the Jewish Federations’ Center for Jewish Belonging. Rabbi Rothstein studied at Kushner Yeshiva High School, Lev HaTorah, Machon Lev, and Binghampton University. He received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Elchanan Isaac Theological Seminary (REITS) and a Masters of Social Work from Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work.
Raised in a multi-racial Chabad family from Monsey, NY, Rav Isaiah sees himself as a human bridge, connecting disparate parts of the Jewish community and America. He is a member of Rabbis Without Borders, and Schusterman Foundations’ ROI + Senior Fellowships, and has been listed in the Jewish Week’s “36 Under 36.” His writing and commentary has been featured in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Jewish publications across the world. When he is not serving in his rabbinic roles, Rabbi Rothstein is writing a musical about Queen Esther.
Rabbi Rachel Timoner
Rabbi Rachel Timoner is grateful and proud to serve as Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She is honored to stand with families at the moments of greatest joy and deepest sorrow in their lives, and she is delighted to be part of a flowering of creativity, community, learning, spirituality, and action at CBE.
Her initiatives in recent years include a weekly class designed to get to the heart and meaning of the prayer experience, a rabbinic conversation on antisemitism, a study series on systemic racism in America, a weekly class about peoplehood and nationalism, a sukkah about the refugee experience, a dialogue and study series on Israel, a revival of CBE’s youth group, a partnership with Antioch Baptist Church to address racism and antisemitism in Brooklyn, and a Dismantling Racism Team which was part of the successful campaigns to Raise the Age of criminal responsibility and to win bail reform in the State of New York. She helped to launch RAC-NY and Reform California, two statewide efforts to bring Reform Jewish values to bear on core issues of our times, such as immigration, affordable housing, and racial profiling. In November 2016, Rabbi Timoner, in cooperation with City Councilmember Brad Lander, co-founded #GetOrganizedBK in CBE’s sanctuary, so that over the next two years, ten thousand Brooklyn neighbors came together to resist autocracy and protect human rights. In May 2022, she gathered 55 women rabbis of all denominations to meet with the mayor to change the face of Jewish leadership in New York. On any given Shabbat, you’ll find Rabbi Timoner speaking about our purpose as Jews and human beings, the moral challenges of our times, the ways we need each other, and awakening to the spiritual aspect of our lives.
From 2009 to 2015, Rabbi Timoner served as Associate Rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple in Los Angeles, where she was a teacher of Torah and helped to develop the Shabbat Morning Minyan, Community of Elders, Spirituality Workshop, and Community Organizing Leadership Team that took on public transportation and economic justice.
Previously, Rabbi Timoner raised funds to rebuild the San Francisco Women’s Building; worked to mitigate the harm of welfare reform in California; and founded two leadership programs and a peer hotline for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth.
She is a graduate of Yale University, received s’micha from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and was a Rockefeller Next Generation Leadership Fellow and a Wexner Graduate Fellow. Rabbi Timoner serves on the board of the New York Jewish Agenda, the Brooklyn Community Foundation, the New York Board of Rabbis, the UJA-Federation of New York, Plaza Community Chapel, and the International Council of the New Israel Fund. She is a T’ruah chavera and is a graduate of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s Clergy Leadership Program and the Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training. She is the author of Breath of Life: God as Spirit in Judaism.