The Shofar Project 5785
A Study and Practice Group for Young AdultsA FREE 4-week program led by Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife and Rebecca Schisler
August 25 – September 15, 2025
Four Live Zoom Sessions
Mondays, 8:00 – 9:15 PM ET
(Please note: the second session will take place on Tuesday, September 2)
We invite you to enter into a powerful journey of returning to our most authentic selves.
Please join Rebecca Schisler, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, and an intimate group of folks in their 20s and 30s for four special sessions of our weekly Shevet Jewish Mindfulness Community to prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur during the month of Elul. Together, we’ll immerse ourselves in deepened introspection, reflection, and practice during this period traditionally dedicated to teshuva (return).
We will draw our teachings during this time from This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, the contemporary classic by Rabbi Alan Lew, z”l, which offers us profound insights into Elul, the holiday season, and the process of teshuvah — returning again to our intentions for the person we wish to be.
This free program features
- Four weekly live practice sessions (8:00 – 9:15 PM ET on August 25 and September 2, 8, and 15), featuring teachings from the book as well as meditation or other contemplative practice and small-group processing. Sessions will be recorded and available for those who cannot attend live.
- Community connection via the Shevet WhatsApp discussion group.
- An (optional) opportunity to deepen your practice by learning and studying with a chevruta, a study partner.
Together we breathe, together we change, together we grow.
Testimonials
“Thank you Keshira and Rebecca for guiding us through this journey so lovingly. Thanks everyone for being present and brave throughout this process 🙏🏾”
“For me, it’s a paradigm shift to understand mindfulness meditation as teshuva.”
“I meditate pretty much every day at lunch for ~ 10 minutes. Today I did the Teshuvah practice and it felt so grounding to be honoring both this time of Elul specifically and my Jewishness more generally in my daily practice. So grateful to you all!”
Meet Your Instructors:
Rebecca Schisler
Rebecca is a meditation teacher, artist, and Jewish educator. A devoted contemplative practitioner, she has led groups and taught classes and retreats with Or HaLev, Wilderness Torah, Pardes, Stanford School of Medicine, Urban Adamah, Hamakom, and the Awakened Heart Project. She was previously the Director of Student Health & Well-being at Stanford University’s Hillel, and co-authored the Mahloket Matters Schools Curriculum with the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators. 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. Rebecca currently lives in the California Bay Area, where she maintains a lively studio art practice as the artist-in-residence at the JCC East Bay, loves to host Jewish gatherings of all kinds, and tries to lose herself among her neighboring redwood trees as much as possible.
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 Core Faculty Member with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and also enjoys working with beloved, The Jewish Studio Project, Kirva, the Avodah Institute for Social Change, and the Jewish Learning Collaborative, among other national Jewish organisations. Additionally, she delights in serving as a shlichat tzibbur, life spiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, consultant, facilitator, teacher, liturgist and songstress. Her work in these realms is informed by her lived experience as a queer, bi-racial, child-free Jewish person, 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.