New 18-Month Training
Applications Are Now Closed
The Institute for Jewish Spirituality is thrilled to announce Kol Dodi: Jewish Spiritual Director Training, a new program that will prepare participants to serve as spiritual directors.
Kol Dodi translates from the Hebrew as “voice of my beloved.” Participants in this program will learn to accompany others on their spiritual journeys in one-on-one or group settings.
Kol Dodi is grounded in IJS’s contemplative and contemporary core spiritual practices for cultivating awareness of mind, body and heart, and for attuning to the Voice of the Beloved.
Spiritual direction is a unique practice that offers a distinct set of skills, ethics, and practices which are helpful for clergy and other spiritual care providers.
The program incorporates multidisciplinary approaches to contemplative soul companioning, drawing from both Jewish wisdom and the field of spiritual direction, with the aim of supporting the formation of self as a Jewish spiritual director. Towards this end, Kol Dodi’s formation program and curriculum centers the theory and practice of Jewish spiritual direction.
This unique training includes:
-
-
-
- Teaching from core and guest faculty
- Regular support and supervision from mentors
- Chevruta (peer-based learning partners)
- Small group experiential practice
- Mindfulness and embodiment practices
- Creative process and expressive arts
- Trauma-informed orientation to spiritual director formation
- Curriculum that integrates sacred activism into development as a spiritual director
-
-
The program is directed and taught by Rabbi Myriam Klotz, IJS Senior Core Faculty and a pioneer in the field of Jewish Spiritual Direction. Program Faculty include Rabbi Klotz and Rabbi Elisa Goldberg, who together bring decades of experience and mastery in Jewish Spiritual Direction, psychotherapy, and spiritual care. Mentors for Kol Dodi include Rabbi Nicole Auerbach, Cantor Ellen Dreskin, Rabbi Rex Perlmeter, and Ashley Plotnick, MEd, MAJS, MSW. Together, they will offer a curriculum grounded in relational mindfulness, sacred listening, prayer, and embodied wisdom, as well as creativity and liberatory imagination.
We are committed to providing a learning community that welcomes people from many racial, religious, cultural and spiritual traditions, as well as participants who embody sexual and gender diversity, disability and multigenerational perspectives.
Course Structure
Kol Dodi will run for 18 months, beginning with a five-day in-person retreat in October 2023 held at the beautiful Trinity Retreat Center in Cornwall, CT. The program will include one other in-person retreat and an online retreat in addition to interim work.
Included in Course Tuition:
-
-
-
- Access to IJS course dashboard
- Trauma-informed orientation to spiritual director formation
- Curriculum that integrates sacred activism into development as a spiritual director
- Ongoing Online Learning Sessions
- Regular meetings with mentor
- Chevrutah (peer-based learning partners)
- Small group experiential practice
- Mindfulness and embodiment practices
- One 4-day online retreat, from Monday, November 18 through Thursday, November 21, 2024
- Program Certificate upon completion of training requirements
- Two in-person retreats:
-
- The first will run from Sunday, October 22 through Thursday, October 26, 2023
- The second will run from Sunday, April 7 through Thursday, April 11, 2024
-
-
-
Program Costs
Costs include all program components, including room and board for the two in-person retreats. The tuition level you select will be due in 4 equal payments over the course of the program. The level you choose will not have any bearing on your application. The higher tuition level enables participants to stay in a single room during the in-person retreats. The lower level enables participants to share a double room with another participant. All rooms have their own bathrooms.
$11,000
Tuition and single room at in-person retreats
4 equal payments of $2,750
$9,000
Tuition and shared double room at in-person retreats
4 equal payments of $2,250
Kol Dodi: Jewish Spiritual Director Training
Faculty
Rabbi Myriam Klotz
(she/they), IJS Senior Faculty
Myriam has served as core faculty for IJS clergy, educator and training cohorts since 2003. A Jewish spiritual director since 1999, Myriam was the founding director of the Spirituality Initiative/Spiritual Direction program at HUC-JIR in New York from 2010-2020. Myriam was a founding director of the Bekhol Levavkha Jewish Spiritual Director training at HUC-JIR, a mentor for the Morei Derekh Jewish Spiritual Director Training, a consultant for the Spiritual Direction programs at HUC’s Los Angeles and Cincinnati campuses, and the Jewish Theological Seminary. They are a founding member of the Spiritual Direction team for the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Myriam is currently the Vice Chair of the Board of Spiritual Directors International.
A graduate of Brown University, New York University/International Center of Photography and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Myriam is a certified yoga instructor and yoga therapist, taught the yoga/embodied practice IJS core practice strands for 19 years, and co-founded and co-directed the Yoga and Jewish Spirituality Teacher Training at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. Myriam lives with her family in Philadelphia, PA.
Rabbi Elisa Goldberg
(she/her), Program Faculty
For over two decades, Rabbi Elisa Goldberg has accompanied others on their spiritual journeys as a spiritual director, professional chaplain, congregational rabbi, and educator. Rabbi Goldberg served until 2021 as a long time spiritual director at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and currently at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She teaches at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College on Rabbinic Ethics and Pastoral Counseling, and provides clinical supervision for students. She has served as Director of the Office of Rabbinic Placement for the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and led community chaplaincy services at the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Philadelphia for fourteen years.
Rabbi Goldberg authored a guidebook on spirituality and recovery with Drexel University and consults on the integration of spiritually informed care. She was honored to be the first woman to lead the Philadelphia Board of Rabbis. She maintains a private spiritual direction and pastoral counseling practice and provides consultation and coaching for rabbinic colleagues.
Mentors
Rabbi Nicole Auerbach
Cantor Ellen Dreskin
Rabbi Rex Perlmeter
