Mondays, 5:00 – 6:15pm ET
November 18, 25, December 2, 9
This past year has made it tragically clear how the traumatic histories of our ancestors can influence our reality—both personally and on the world stage. Learn to heal these wounds using wisdom from the crossroads of Jewish texts, neuroscience, and depth psychology.
Transform the residual effects of your and your family’s past to reclaim your innate wisdom and freedom in the present.
“Wounds into Wisdom is for anyone who has suffered trauma, either directly or in a family whose generational trauma is buried. It helps readers uncover suffering and use it to help others, the final stage of healing.”
— GLORIA STEINEM
Join us for Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, a four-week introduction to healing the wounds of intergenerational Jewish trauma, offered by renowned author and teacher, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Ph.D.
Both our sacred texts and scientific data teach that traumatic wounds don’t simply disappear over time. The residues of the difficult circumstances that our ancestors endured over generations ripple across time, often cascading down the family tree, causing painful unconscious patterns that become stuck and affect us, our children, and our families.
This four-week course is designed to introduce the work of Jewish Ancestral Healing in a most personal sense, to help alleviate the residues of inherited traumas and dissolve their negative influences.
Rabbi Firestone will draw from her acclaimed book, Wounds into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Trauma (Monkfish, 2019), which received the 2020 Nautilus Book Award Gold in Psychology and the Jewish Women’s Caucus of the Association for Women in Psychology 2020 book award. This groundbreaking work employs interviews, case studies, and her own autobiographical narratives to demonstrate how trauma residue passes from generation to generation – and how it can be transformed.
From Rabbi Firestone:
“Tragedies may befall us, but they do not define us…We always have a choice about the outcome of our story. We can bemoan our fate or we can recognize our pain and follow our lives’ circumstances into unforeseen directions and new meanings. We can ask: What does this wound inspire me to do that I could never have imagined doing before?”
“Rabbi Tirzah Firestone melds her skills as a psychotherapist with the spiritual insights of the rabbinic tradition she is steeped in. The result is a work characterized by wisdom, insight, and compassion, all brought to bear on what is surely one of the most painful subjects in modern history: Jewish trauma and its intergenerational reverberations.”
— Gabor Maté, MD
Live Sessions for this course will be held on Mondays from 5:00 – 6:15 pm ET on Zoom, recorded for those unable to attend live. Live Sessions will be held on the following four dates: November 18, 25, December 2, 9.
Each live session will include a talk by Rabbi Firestone with slides, at least one guided meditation, an opportunity to journal (or otherwise process the material), and time for Q&A.
Rabbi Firestone asks that participants come to the first live session having read the Introduction and Chapter 1 of her book, Wounds Into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma. You can find information for purchasing it in the course platform after you register.
We also encourage participants to study with a partner (chevruta) for this course, because ancestral healing work takes off when we are witnessed and—and chevruta, the traditional Jewish way of learning in pairs, is a beautiful way of widening our understanding, deepening our practice, and connecting with another person. We encourage you to either take the course with a friend or sign-up to be matched with a chevruta/study partner after you register.
Ancestral healing work takes off when we are witnessed. Therefore, we encourage participants to study with a partner (chevruta) for this course. Chevruta, the traditional way of learning in pairs in Judaism, is a beautiful way of widening our understanding, deepening our practice, and connecting with another person. We encourage you to take the course with a friend in order to deepen your learning and practice or to sign-up for a chevruta/study partner after you register.
Course Tuition
IJS is pleased to offer these courses at three tuition levels.
We encourage you to pay at the highest level you can, which will enable more students to participate.
Full Course Tuition
$349
Reduced Course Tuition
$249
Reduced Course Tuition
$149
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Ph.D.,
is an author, Jungian psychotherapist, and a leader in the international Jewish Renewal Movement. Ordained by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in 1992, she is the founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh in Boulder, Colorado. Rabbi Firestone has served on the board of directors and as Co-Chair of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.
Raised in an Orthodox family, Firestone’s spiritual curiosity called her to search beyond the confines of her family’s strict Jewish ideology. Leaving home, she embarked upon a life-changing spiritual odyssey that she chronicled in With Roots in Heaven: One Woman’s Passionate Journey into the Heart of Her Faith. After immersing herself in a wide variety of spiritual practices and worldviews, Firestone returned with fresh vigor to become a rabbi in a pluralistic and egalitarian Judaism.
Now Rabbi Emerita of her congregation, Firestone maintains a private practice in depth psychology and teaches internationally about the interface of Jungian psychology and Kabbalah, intergenerational trauma healing, and the re-integration of the feminine wisdom tradition within Judaism. In all of these topics, her emphasis is on honing ancient wisdom practices to assist us at this critical time in world history.
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone was in the first rabbinic cohort of IJS’s Clergy Leadership Program.
Learn more at: tirzahfirestone.com.
