Tuesday, August 5 – Sunday, August 10, 2025
Ralston White Retreat
Mill Valley, California
Utilizing the gifts of mindfulness, embodiment, song, prayer, and a variety of Jewish spiritual teachings, you will:
- Learn tools and practices to reconnect with your innate wisdom and authenticity.
- Nurture your capacity for resilience, compassion, and well-being.
- Cultivate insight and wise action in response to the challenges of our world.
- Refresh and renew your body, heart, mind, and soul.
Falling shortly after the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’av, a day of mourning, and including Tu B’av, a day of celebrating love, our retreat is a sacred space to open our hearts to grief, love, and everything in between.
All folks in their 20’s and 30’s are welcome. No experience with mindfulness and/or Judaism is necessary. This retreat will be held mostly in social silence.
Retreat Costs and Financial Support
We understand that the costs for a retreat can be prohibitive. To help with this, we are offering three payment options for this retreat. Level 1 covers the actual cost of participation.
If you need additional financial assistance, please request support using this form before registering for the retreat. We will review your request promptly and be in touch with you about the level of support we are able to provide and how to register.
Pricing
Level 1
Private bedroom with a shared bathroom: $1,500
ADA accessible private bedroom with a private bathroom: $1,500
Level 2
Shared double bedroom with a shared bathroom: $1,200
Level 3
Shared dorm style room with a shared bathroom: $900
Schedule
Participants should plan to arrive at Ralston White Retreat Center in beautiful Marin, CA between 3:00 – 5:00 PM PST on Tuesday, August 5 to register and get settled. The retreat will begin with dinner at 5:30 PST and an opening session at 6:30 PST.
The retreat will end at 12 noon on Sunday, August 10. Participants are welcome to stay through lunch.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this retreat for me?
This retreat is open to beginner and advanced students alike. If you have never meditated before, you are welcome! Our practice guidance will be both accessible and deep.
We strive to make this retreat inclusive for all bodies through ensuring the availability of gender neutral bathrooms and chairs without arms. If there are additional ways that we can support your sense of belonging, please reach out to us.
Meditation is contra-indicated to some mental health conditions. If you are not sure whether retreat is for you at this time, please contact us at [email protected]
What is social silence?
Shortly after our opening programs on the first day, we will enter into what we call “social silence.” This means that we are inviting you to not speak socially with other participants, check your phone/email, or otherwise “exit” the silence for the duration of each day. This enables you to slow down, sink deeply into the practices, and allows you to truly “re-source” yourself in the spaciousness of the silence. You will have the chance to ask questions of the faculty after instructional periods, in small groups, and during designated Q&A periods throughout the day. We will also be chanting and singing together each morning.
How will we be observing Jewish tradition?
While our retreat is deeply rooted in Jewish tradition, you are welcome to participate regardless of your Jewish background. All Hebrew terms will be translated and explained. Our Jewish practice will be egalitarian, contemplative, heart-centered, songful, prayerful, embodied, expansive, and deep.
We will be engaging in prayer and Shabbat ritual as a full group, and there will be time built into the schedule for folks with a personal prayer practice to pray. We will be using instruments on Shabbat. There will be an opportunity to say the Mourner’s Kaddish every day.
What kind of meditation will we be practicing?
We will be immersed in the practice of mindfulness, paying attention to the present moment with non-judgmental, loving awareness. While mindfulness is inherent and central to Jewish tradition, our methods for deepening mindfulness on retreat have been learned from the Buddhist tradition. Here at IJS, we integrate mindfulness with Jewish wisdom and contemplative Jewish practice.
Retreat Faculty
Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife
Teacher
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.
Rebecca Schisler
Teacher
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, Awakened Heart Project, Orot, Wilderness Torah, Pardes, and Stanford School of Medicine. 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.
Alison Cohen
Teacher
Alison Cohen (she/her), also known as Ali, loves supporting people in strengthening their capacity to connect: with themselves, with others, and with ancient and contemporary wisdom traditions. Ali’s journey to practice began as a young adult when she was desperate for guidance on how to compassionately navigate her tumultuous internal landscape, not to mention the world. On a young adult retreat, she found what she was looking for. Ali has practiced extensively in Buddhist and Jewish meditation spaces ever since. A former public high school teacher and mindfulness program director, Ali guides Two Wings Mindfulness, which offers courses, retreats, and coaching grounded in the wisdom of trauma-sensitive mindfulness. In addition, she mentors in the global Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Certification Program and teaches in Tara Brach’s 2025 Year of Courageous Loving course. Ali has trained with the Jewish Mindfulness Center of Brooklyn, Mindful Schools, OrHaLev and IJS (Yesod), the UMass Center for Mindfulness (MBSR), David Treleaven (trauma-sensitive mindfulness and internal family systems), Taproot’s Community Ritualist Training Program, and the International Institute for Restorative Practices, as well as under the guidance of several beloved teachers.
Jes Heppler
Assistant Teacher
Jes is a writer, researcher, and meditation teacher committed to exploring the ineffable through mindfulness, felt sense, and language. As a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at UC Berkeley, Jes is writing a dissertation on the role of embodied experience in gut feelings and more broadly explores the relationship between the mind, the body, and knowledge. During Jes’ doctoral studies, their long-standing interest in these topics led them into Jewish and contemplative practice outside the classroom. Jes founded and previously led the Queer Sit Collective in Boston, MA and they regularly teach for the Shevet community at IJS and for RUACH in the Greater Boston area. Jes is a graduate of IJS’ and Or HaLev’s Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training. Their writing has been featured at Hey Alma and At the Well.
Ruthie Praskins
Chef
Ruthie Praskins (she/her) is an Ashkenazi Jewish chef, herbalist, ritualist, and grief tender. She runs The Healing Hearth, a botanically-forward and gluten-free friendly farm to table private chef service in the San Francisco Bay Area. Ruthie orients towards food as medicine and daily opportunity to court deeper intimacy with the living ecosystems which nourish our bodies and that we belong to. Ruthie is passionate about Nourishment as an integral pathway in supporting the human capacity to show up resourced and embodied in these times and finds great joy in alchemizing local ingredients and medicinal herbs into edible art. Ruthie weaves extensive knowledge from training in Functional Nutrition, Ayurveda, Vitalist Herbalism, Community Grief Ritual and Somatic Trauma Resolution into her custom menus and Way.