Rabbi Sam Feinsmith

Senior Core Faculty

Sam developed and now directs Educating for a Jewish Spiritual Life which brings IJS’s spiritual practices to hundreds of educators in Jewish settings and their students. He is one of two lead teachers for our online course on Jewish mindfulness meditation, Gift of Awareness. In the past, Sam wrote the weekly Hasidic Text Study track. He is a gifted musician and, most recently, has been bringing niggunim to the IJS community. He is a founder of Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning in Chicago.

Kohenet (Hebrew Priestess) Keshira haLev Fife

IJS Faculty Fellow

Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife sprinkles sparkles, disrupts expectations, and offers blessings wherever she goes. She serves as Founding Kohenet of Kesher Pittsburgh, Program Director for Beloved Garden, inaugural Faculty Fellow with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and also enjoys working with the Jewish Learning Collaborative. Additionally, she delights in serving as a shlichat tzibbur, life spiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, teacher, facilitator, liturgist and songstress. Her work in these realms is informed by her lived experience as a queer, bi-racial, 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. After many years of traveling and living in Australia, in 2018, she and her beloved returned home to Osage and Haudenosaunee land, also called Pittsburgh, PA.

Rabbi Miriam Margles

Senior Core Faculty

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. She is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and the Jerusalem Fellows at the Mandel Leadership Institute. Miriam was a founding faculty member at the Romemu Yeshiva, served as a fellow with the Rising Song Institute, co-founded the award-winning educational program engaging with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Encounter, and recorded her original Jewish music with the Hadar Rising Song ensemble.