Mindfulness for the Climate Crisis:
Resilience in a Changing WorldMarch 12 – April 2, 2025
Live Sessions Wednesdays, 3:00-4:15 pm ET | March 12, 19, 26, April 2
Respond to the challenges of climate change with calm, presence, and wisdom
The climate crisis is a major source of stress in our lives. While we have little control over the storms, floods, and fires it’s unleashing today, we can learn to understand our anxieties and fears—and how to stop living in a state of overwhelm.
Do you find yourself:
- Wanting to be informed but avoiding the news?
- Disoriented by how much is being lost and how quickly the world is changing?
- Knowing action is important but believing that nothing you do really has any impact?
- Anxious about what the future will bring?
Access the spiritual reserves you need to cope with our changing world
You’re not alone. Fears about the climate crisis can shut down our capacity for mindful presence. But there’s a path out of this disorientation and reactivity.
In Mindfulness for the Climate Crisis, we’ll harness the Jewish mystical tradition of the Four Worlds of Kabbalah to gently turn ourselves towards trust, ease, and expansiveness. We’ll explore the physical, emotional, spiritual, and existential invitations of climate change with a community of other clear-eyed seekers, guided by the wisdom of Jewish tradition.
Joining Mindfulness for the Climate Crisis will help you:
- Better understand how climate change is impacting you on a physical, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual level
- Notice when the climate crisis shifts you into emotional inflammation or self-abandonment
- Uncover the quiet wisdom of your body, heart, and soul
- Learn how to respond, rather than simply react, to climate change, and deepen your capacity to access your emotional and spiritual resources
- Reduce feelings of isolation and increase your capacity to be with loved ones struggling with the climate crisis
Components of the Course
In class: Introduction to key Jewish terms and concepts, study of grounding Jewish texts, guided practice, opportunities for deepening reflection in small groups. All sessions will be recorded for those who cannot attend.
Between classes: Weekly reflection questions to support you in processing and integrating key learnings and insights—plus the option of working with a practice partner.
“I wanted to find a way out of the disbelief, despair and hopelessness that the impact of climate change was stirring in me. I tired of hearing myself having the same conversations with family and friends, some version of ‘how could this be’ and ‘what can I do?’ The sessions I had with Rabbi Ora were immensely helpful. ”
Rabbi Ora is a thoughtful and compassionate teacher with great patience. The opportunity to delve deeply into the texts of our tradition while bringing in a spiritually-informed understanding of the climate crisis was so appreciated by my congregants.
“There are so many emotions, thoughts, and fears, as well as hopes [around the climate crisis], all wrapped up together. Rabbi Ora is exquisitely skilled at guiding me through the process of untangling these many threads and exploring each one.”
Registration Closes March 10, 2025
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.
Abundance Level
$249
Basic Level
$149
If you have been impacted by the fires in California, we want to do what we can to support you. If financial support will help make it possible for you to take this course, please complete this form.
Meet your instructor:
Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner
Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner is a climate change chaplain, educator, and innovative spiritual leader. As the founder of Exploring Apocalypse — a trauma-informed climate chaplaincy practice — she helps individuals and communities across faith traditions explore the spiritual disruptions and invitations of climate change.
Rabbi Ora sees curiosity as an important spiritual posture for living in a time of climate crisis. Her work moves folks from reactivity into responsiveness and from self-abandonment into vulnerability-inspired care.
Prior to her role as a climate change chaplain, Rabbi Ora served as a spiritual leader and pastoral caregiver in prisons, hospitals, and congregations across the United States. A poet, liturgist, and yoga and meditation teacher, she holds a BA and MA from the University of Toronto, as well as rabbinic ordination and an MA from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Rabbi Ora and her partner Asa live in New Haven, CT.