IJS Programs

Over a five-week period leading up to Rosh Hashanah, IJS faculty (Rabbi Sam Feinsmith, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, Rabbi Myriam Klotz, Rabbi Miriam Margles, and Rabbi Marc Margolius) will guide participants in ongoing Jewish spiritual practice grounded in teachings drawn from This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, by Rabbi Alan Lew. This free program includes weekly written teachings, weekly live practice sessions, a private Google discussion group, and the option to learn with a chevrutah, or practice partner.

Over a five-week period leading up to Rosh Hashana, join an intimate group of folks in their 20s and 30s to share in ongoing Jewish spiritual practice grounded in teachings drawn from This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, by Rabbi Alan Lew. This program includes weekly written teachings, live virtual sessions to cultivate connection and practice in community, a Whatsapp group, and the option to learn and practice with a chevrutah, or study partner.

Each of the 8 modules includes video teachings by Rabbi Bendat-Appell, text study with Rabbi Feinsmith, a guided meditation, a “mindful life” practice, reflection questions, and a supplemental handout.

In each session, we will integrate embodied practice — including mindfulness, blessing practice, and contemplative prayer — with learning and reflection. To learn more, visit orhalev.net.

Each of the eight short episodes in this course is led by a different teacher and introduces a unique prayer practice. Find your own authentic and meaningful prayer practice as you explore these practices for yourself. You will receive accompanying sources for each episode to support your learning. Each week, participants will gather on Zoom with Rabbi Miriam Margles for live practice and reflection together, connecting in community, and the opportunity to ask questions.

The Institute for Jewish Spirituality invites you to learn with journalist, scholar, and meditation teacher Rabbi Dr. Jay Michaelson in a six-week online course. Through text study and discussion, we’ll learn about the teachings of Buddhism that have influenced contemporary mindfulness, and explore their original contexts. Which goals, methods, and worldviews are similar to Jewish mindfulness, and which diverge? How might we wisely navigate the process of integration? All questions, backgrounds, doubts, and curiosities are welcome – our aim is to enrich whatever Jewish, BuJu, or other forms of mindfulness and meditation you practice.

Each week, participants will receive a packet of materials with Rabbi Margolius’s teaching on the Torah portion, a recorded audio guided meditation, specific suggestions for applying the middah in daily life, and additional resources for exploring the week’s middah through poetry, Jewish prayer, and a playlist of popular music reflecting the theme of the week.

This year-long program will feature weekly written lessons with original translations and explications of the Netivot Shalom by Rabbi Slater, enriched and deepened by additional resources and materials and live weekly practice sessions led by Rabbi Margles. (The written materials by Rabbi Slater were originally offered by IJS in 2010-11.)

a transformative 12-week program in Jewish mindfulness designed to renew and deepen participants’ meditation practice, reduce stress and suffering, deepen joy, and provide Jewish mindfulness tools for leadership, resilience, and wisdom in the participants’ workplaces and communities.

It features digestible, clear instructional videos, journaling prompts, guided meditations and weekly live practice sessions to develop connections with other participants and support your Jewish spiritual growth and leadership.

In this four-week course, you will investigate your own modes of praying through body, heart and mind – and then discover which of the many prayers in the siddur might serve as a vehicle for your native expression. Through our individual practice and collective investigation, you will begin a process of sketching out what might constitute your own matbe’a, our “fixed” structure of prayer, for the sake of nurturing our own deepest kavvanah, our true intention in prayer, and for the sake of connecting in truth with the Jewish tradition.

The physicality of this prayer is essential to its expression. How can we deepen our prayer through physical gesture, presence and posture? What opens in our prayer lives if we expand our intention to pray with the body? In this four-week course, Rabbi Miriam Klotz will guide you in embodied prayer practice, delving more deeply into this central Amidah prayer and its worded intentions.

Over four weeks, Rabbi David Jaffe will help you explore this potent practice called Hitbodedut, starting with small amounts of time and building each week. Daily assignments explore preparing to speak, setting intentions, time and space for practice and closing a session. A month of hitbodedut has the power to open the heart, clarify priorities, increase awareness of our soul’s desire and strengthen our connection with the Infinite.

Join us for four innovative workshops with working Jewish artists, each making a mark in their respective fields. Each workshop starts with a conversation between our host and the guest artist about their creative process and Jewish spirituality. The guest artist will then lead participants in a short artistic exercise — a chance for you to make your own creation.

 In this course, Rabbi Toba Spitzer, author of the acclaimed book, God is Here: Reimagining the Divine, will guide you in a deep exploration of metaphors for the Divine in Jewish tradition, such as Water, Voice, Fire, Rock, Cloud, and Becoming. Each week, Rabbi Spitzer will unpack a single metaphor during a live practice session (which will be recorded and available to those who cannot attend), immersing participants in mindfulness practices designed to help you access these pathways to the sacred in your own life. For God believers, non-believers, and all those in between! Participants will receive a copy of God is Here as part of their registration.

Would you like to be less reactive and more engaged when you listen to others? Do you want to be able to listen to people with whom you disagree with less discomfort and more empathy? Shema, meaning “hear” in Hebrew, is a five-week online program to help you cultivate your capacity to listen with deep and sacred awareness to yourself and others, as you explore the four worlds of experience — physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual.