A Free IJS Four-Week Online Program for Elul
September 4 – 25, 2024
Wednesdays, 8:00 – 9:00 PM ET
Join faculty members of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality for The Shofar Project: Awakening to Action for the New Year: four weeks of ongoing Jewish spiritual practice to prepare our inner lives for the challenges and joys of the upcoming Jewish year, 5785.
We will explore a new theme each week
in the month leading up to Rosh Hashanah:
WEEK 1
Awakening the Heart
with Rabbi Miriam Margles
WEEK 2
Attuning to the Pain of the World
with Rabbi Sam Feinsmith
WEEK 3
Returning to Compassion
with Rabbi Marc Margolius
WEEK 4
Transforming into an Instrument of Justice
with Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife
Course Components
Our learning and practice will be sustained and deepened through the following elements:
- Weekly written teachings, with resources and suggestions for daily Jewish mindfulness practice, exploring a specific spiritual teaching associated with attuning to the call of the shofar. These teachings will include Jewish mindfulness practices, questions for reflection and journaling, and supplemental materials such as poetry and music.
- Weekly live practice sessions (Wednesdays, September 4, 11, 18, and 25, from 8:00 – 9:00 PM ET), each led by a different IJS faculty member, elaborating upon the week’s teaching, featuring meditation or other contemplative practice and small-group processing. Sessions will be recorded and available for those who cannot attend live.
- Embodied practice of the weekly shofar theme at our free weekly Yoga Studio, led by Cantor Lizzie Shammash on Zoom—Mondays from 11:00 – 11:45 am ET.
- An opportunity to find and practice with a partner.
FOR YOUNG ADULTS: We are pleased to offer a special variation on our Elul program created specifically for folks in their 20’s and 30’s. Click here to learn more about this free, five-week online program: Answering the Call of the Shofar: A Study and Practice Group for Young Adults
Register for the Shofar Project
Meet Your Instructors
Rabbi Sam Feinsmith
Senior Core Faculty
Sam developed and now directs Educating for a Jewish Spiritual Life which brings IJS’s spiritual practices to hundreds of educators in Jewish settings and their students. He is one of two lead teachers for our online course on Jewish mindfulness meditation, Gift of Awareness. In the past, Sam wrote the weekly Hasidic Text Study track. He is a gifted musician and, most recently, has been bringing niggunim to the IJS community. He is a founder of Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning in Chicago.
Kohenet (Hebrew Priestess) Keshira haLev Fife
IJS Faculty Fellow
Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife sprinkles sparkles, disrupts expectations, and offers blessings wherever she goes. She serves as Founding Kohenet of Kesher Pittsburgh, Program Director for Beloved Garden, inaugural Faculty Fellow with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and also enjoys working with the Jewish Learning Collaborative. Additionally, she delights in serving as a shlichat tzibbur, life spiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, teacher, facilitator, liturgist and songstress. Her work in these realms is informed by her lived experience as a queer, bi-racial, Jewish person, her belief that Book, Body and Earth are equal sources of wisdom, the quandaries she has encountered as a scholar of the Orphan Wisdom School, and her deep commitment to a thriving, liberatory Jewish future. Keshira received Kohenet smicha in 2017 and earned her BS 2000 and MS 2001 at Carnegie Mellon University. After many years of traveling and living in Australia, in 2018, she and her beloved returned home to Osage and Haudenosaunee land, also called Pittsburgh, PA.
Rabbi Myriam Klotz
Senior Core Faculty
Myriam is on the IJS Senior Core Faculty team, serving as Program Director for the Kol Dodi Spiritual Director Training program and advocate for DEI initiatives at IJS. Myriam has been on the IJS faculty since 2003, teaching yoga and embodied practices in the clergy, educator, Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Trainings as well as hevraya/alumni retreats and programs. Myriam created a Middot Yoga Teacher Training for Westchester county, NY, a Yoga and Jewish Spirituality Teacher Training at Isabella Freedman, and was the director of the Spirituality Initiative/Spiritual Direction program at HUC-JIR from 2010-2020. Myriam directed Bekhol Levavkha Jewish Spiritual Director training at HUC-JIR and is a spiritual director and supervisor in private practice. A graduate of Brown University, New York University/International Center of Photography and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Myriam is a certified yoga instructor, yoga therapist and body worker. She has contributed to several publications on the topics of embodiment, spiritual practice and spiritual direction, and has produced IJS’s Yoga for Jewish Spirituality CD series.
Rabbi Miriam Margles
Senior Core Faculty
Miriam has a long and rich association with IJS, having taught on various retreats and programs over the years. She joins the Institute as a Senior Core Faculty after over a decade as the rabbi of the Danforth Jewish Circle in Toronto. She is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and the Jerusalem Fellows at the Mandel Leadership Institute. Miriam was a founding faculty member at the Romemu Yeshiva, served as a fellow with the Rising Song Institute, co-founded the award-winning educational program engaging with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Encounter, and recorded her original Jewish music with the Hadar Rising Song ensemble.
Rabbi Marc Margolius
Vice President of Faculty and Program
Marc developed and teaches in our newest online course, Awareness in Action: Cultivating Character through Mindfulness and Middot. He also spearheads the daily online meditations that IJS developed as part of our response to the coronavirus pandemic. He directs our immersive programming for lay leaders and works closely with our clergy alumni as director of the Hevraya program. Marc authored several years of IJS’s weekly Text Study, exploring the weekly portion through mindfulness and middot.
