The Peaceful Parent Project

January 22 – February 26, 2025

Six Live Zoom Sessions
8:00-9:15 PM ET

Program Limited to 30 Participants

Register Now

Discover a Practice and Community to Help You More Frequently
Show Up as Your Best Self with Your Children

Parent and Child
Parenting can be a beautiful, life-affirming journey—and it can also be deeply challenging. If you’ve ever found yourself reacting in frustration, putting your own needs aside, or just wishing you could parent with a little more ease, you’re not alone.

The Institute for Jewish Spirituality is pleased to offer The Peaceful Parent Project, a six-session course presented with our partners at Orot, to help parents bring mindfulness, compassion, and Jewish wisdom into their parenting lives.

The class supports and nourishes participants to become the parents they want to be, and to reshape and deepen their interactions and relationships with their children.

As a parent, do you:

  • Feel guilty when you are not your best self around your children?
  • Yell or react with impatience, irritability, and anger too often?
  • Feel overwhelmed, like nothing you’re doing is good enough?
  • Put your self-care on the back burner as a parent?
  • Want to get on the same page as your partner about parenting?

Do you wish you could:

  • Show up for your children with true presence and attention?
  • Give yourself permission to pause, take a break, and do some self-care to take care of YOU?
  • Integrate Judaism into your parenting style so that your everyday life is meaningful for both you and your children?

Joining a Peaceful Parent cohort can help you:

Parents and Child
  • Foster a nurturing community of peers to share challenges, find support, and learn to navigate the challenges of parenting
  • Cultivate more empathy and compassion for your children
  • Improve your capacity to pause and breathe before responding in the midst of a difficult moment
  • Enhance your ability to be gentle and forgiving with yourself as a parent
  • Gain a greater sense of connection to and nourishment from Jewish teachings and values
Secure Your Spot

Live Sessions

IJS Faculty Fellow, Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell, will teach this course through six live sessions on Zoom. All sessions will be recorded for those who cannot attend live. The dates are as follows:

Wednesdays: January 22, 29, and February 5, 12, 19, 26, 2025

Still Have Questions?

Reference our FAQ page and watch a 15-minute recorded information session
offered by Rebecca Minkus-Lieberman of Orot.

Watch the Info Session

Testimonials

I find myself doing much more deep breathing.

I also find that I am more mindful of the small gratitude in my children, in our moments together and around me in life….I wish the program went on FOREVER!

— Michele, Peaceful Parent Project Participant

The Peaceful Parent Project class helped me take a step back from all the day-to-day challenges and encouraged me to build stronger connections with my children during our busy lives. I liked being able to think critically about how my own interactions with my children could lead to better outcomes for all of us. In the midst of this very challenging year, I so appreciated the ability to explore parenting through the lens of Jewish texts and bring that wisdom to my daily life.

— Shira, Peaceful Parent Project Participant

Get out of your own way – this is the fastest and most affordable way to get on the same page as your partner regarding your parenting.

— Dan, Peaceful Parent Project Participant

Register Today for The Peaceful Parent Project

IJS is pleased to offer this course at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.

To provide the best experience, this program is limited to 30 participants. In the form below, please select your tuition level, fill in your information, and hit submit to be sent to the registration page.

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Meet Your Instructor

Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell

Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell is a teacher of Jewish mindfulness and text and has spent years leading retreats and immersive experiences for adults in various settings through the National Ramah Commission, Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning, and the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Jordan is returning to IJS as a Senior Faculty Fellow. In this role, he will lead the planning of a new center for advanced study, practice, and teaching that we aim to develop over the coming years. He will also teach in online courses and on retreats.

In addition to his work with IJS, Jordan is part of the clergy team at Beth David in Toronto.

Jordan was the founding Director of Ramah Beyond and was Director of Camp Ramah in Canada from 2019-2022. Previously, he worked for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) as a teacher of Jewish Mindfulness and as Director of the Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training. Jordan also taught meditation to rabbis and cantors through IJS’ Clergy Leadership Program. After being ordained in 2008, Jordan served as a congregational rabbi outside of Chicago and co-founded Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning. Jordan is a recipient of the 2014 Covenant Foundation Pomegranate Prize. He and his wife Yael live in Toronto and are the proud and grateful parents of three.

Since 1999, IJS has been a leader in teaching traditional and contemporary Jewish spiritual practices that cultivate mindfulness so that each of us might act with enriched wisdom, clarity, and compassion. These practices, grounded in Jewish values and thought, enable participants to develop important skills while strengthening leadership capacities, deepening their inner lives, and connecting more meaningfully with others, Judaism, and the sacred.

Founded in 2014, Orot was started by a group of passionate Jewish educators committed to redesigning the paradigm of Jewish learning and opening up the well of Jewish wisdom to all. Orot creates programs which foster the wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities. Orot’s programs provide opportunities and offer tools for meaning-making, nourishment, and refuge using personally resonant and accessible Jewish teachings, practices, and experiences.

Since 1999, IJS has been a leader in teaching traditional and contemporary Jewish spiritual practices that cultivate mindfulness so that each of us might act with enriched wisdom, clarity, and compassion. These practices, grounded in Jewish values and thought, enable participants to develop important skills while strengthening leadership capacities, deepening their inner lives, and connecting more meaningfully with others, Judaism, and the sacred.
Founded in 2014, Orot was started by a group of passionate Jewish educators committed to redesigning the paradigm of Jewish learning and opening up the well of Jewish wisdom to all. Orot creates programs which foster the wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities. Orot’s programs provide opportunities and offer tools for meaning-making, nourishment, and refuge using personally resonant and accessible Jewish teachings, practices, and experiences.