Open My Heart
Living Jewish Prayer: A Podcast from IJS
Welcome to Open My Heart: Living Jewish Prayer. Each Monday and Friday, a different teacher will offer a new short prayer-practice, inviting you to join them. From one episode to the next, the practice, and the voices will be different. No one presenter, and no one prayer, will necessarily work for everyone. But our hope (and expectation) is that over time, joining in these prayers will lead you to find your own authentic and meaningful prayer practice and open your heart to prayer.
Listen to our most recent episode below, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Meet your host, Rabbi Jonathan Slater, Senior Program Director. Rabbi Slater has worked with IJS since 2002, having participated in the first rabbinic cohort. He is a co-director of the Clergy Leadership Program, and serves in multiple programs throughout the organization. Rabbi Slater was ordained by JTS and served congregations in northern California for over twenty years.
Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells
Episode 49: Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells
There are so many ways to open up prayer. The most effective, and most important, is to connect deeply to one’s own life, one’s own heart, and to see oneself. From that clear seeing — or the desire to do so — we can express our deepest desires, most overwhelming fears, greatest joys, and significant commitments. That has inspired the flourishing of prayer in the LGBTQ+ community, which does not often see itself in traditional Jewish prayers. Rabbi Denise Eger introduces us to the richness of this prayer tradition in Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells, A Celebration of LGBTQ Jewish Life and Ritual.
Read the episode transcript
I am? And You are? Dialogic Personal Prayer
Episode 18: I am? And You are? Dialogic Personal Prayer Grounding his practice in the teachings of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Hacohen Kook and Rav Dov Singer, Rabbi Yosef Goldman leads us into a deep engagement with our own lived experience, grounding us in a heart of...
Waking Up to Blessing
Episode 17: Waking Up to Blessing Rabbi Susan Leider invites us to join her as she wakes up, connecting the daily Birkhot Hashachar to each step along the way. Read the episode transcript
Chant to Open the Heart
Episode 16: Chant to Open the Heart Chanting a niggun is not only an outward expression of yearning. It can also penetrate the heart. Rabbi Hannah Dresner, chanting in her car, leads us in practice from a parched place, to open to the flow available at all times. Read...
Music to Evoke Prayer
Episode 15: Music to Evoke Prayer Music is so evocative! In just a few notes we can be taken back in time to a far-off place, to a connection with another person. How does that work? What is added through words? Cadence, intonation, emphasis? Join Rabbi Lydia Medwin...
Personal Morning Davening
Episode 14: Priestly Blessing: Lovingkindness Prayer Rabbi Ari Lev Fornari starts his morning davening (prayers) with the awareness that prayer is an embodied practice. He connects with sensation, with sound, with memory, and with the words of the Tradition for a...
Priestly Blessing: Lovingkindness Prayer
Episode 13: Priestly Blessing: Lovingkindness Prayer How do we prepare our hearts to pray? What conditions our souls to know what is important? Rabbi Amy Eilberg has used the mindfulness meditation practice of metta, or lovingkindness, for this purpose. The phrases...
