The Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) announced today that Rabbi Myriam Klotz will join the organization’s staff as Senior Program Director effective August 17.
Klotz, a major figure in Jewish yoga and embodied practice for decades, has been a faculty member at IJS since 2003. She has taught in the organization’s flagship clergy leadership training programs and recently helped to launch its online Jewish yoga studio. In her new position, she will lead the Institute’s development of embodied and somatic practices, with a particular focus on how attention to the body can aid healing, inclusion, and justice work on behalf of traditionally marginalized populations. Her position at IJS will be half-time while she continues her work as Coordinator of Spiritual Direction at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and Director of Bekhol Levavkha: A Training Program for Jewish Spiritual Directors, also at HUC-JIR.
“I am thrilled that Myriam is joining our program staff,” said IJS Executive Director Rabbi Josh Feigelson. “So many of us are awakening to the ways in which our bodies are intimately tied up with our minds, hearts, and spirits—and how paying more attention to our bodies can help us heal from trauma, relate to ourselves and others with greater compassion and bring about greater inclusion, equity, and justice. We have an opportunity to expand and deepen the ways our Torah at IJS responds to these forms of awakening and ensures we collectively sustain and build on them into the future and Myriam is exactly the right person to help lead that effort.”
Klotz received her B.A. from Brown University and was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She is a certified yoga instructor and yoga therapist. She lives in Philadelphia with her spouse Rabbi Margot Stein and their son, Raffi.
