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Welcome to AJS!
We offer two kinds of courses: live and recorded.
Live courses are fully interactive, both during and between sessions.
Recorded courses now include a one-on-one meeting with the course teacher, to help guide each participant through the journey of the course.
To try any of our courses for free, or to stay updated on our online courses and events, please enter your email:
LIVE COURSES
Eight-class course
Ongoing registration
Click here for details
In the month of Elul, leading up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom HaKippur, a still small voice gently calls out to us through the Shofar, inviting us into intimacy with the Divine within ourselves.
In this interactive online course, we will explore teachings from the Piaseczner Rebbe, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalmish Shapira, also known as the Aish Kodesh (1889-1943).
Through textual learning and experiential practice, in this course we will explore how to train ourselves to become more sensitive and open to intimacy. Together, we will learn and experience why passion and feeling are so important to this process, what it means to truly be a feeling person.
Our online community will prepare for, and then experience Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, as openings for growth in this most sacred work.
Eight-class course
Ongoing registration
Click here for details
Prayer is hard. All too often, it is inaccessible, impersonal and leaves us feeling alienated. Yet our prayers can be powerful medicine, helping us overcome adversity within and without.
Every prayer service can become a journey of transformation, through the four Kabbalistic realms of human experience: physicality, emotion, mind and spirit.
Our humble prayerbook (siddur) can become a roadmap to greater self-awareness, gratitude, empathy, focus, love, joy, forgiveness, resilience, creativity, connection and wholeness.
Together, we we will focus on certain key prayers from the daily morning service, learn their texts, explore their context, and then work with them to support our personal journey of becoming our best possible selves.
This course seeks to engage the students experientially with perhaps the oldest source of Jewish Ethics. The Talmudic tractate "Avot," also known as “Pirkei Avot” or Chapters of the Fathers, is named for the early generations of rabbinic sages whose wisdom is included in this short compilation of teachings.
The aim of learning Pirkei Avot is threefold: first, to discover or rediscover one of the masterpieces of Jewish Ethics from its textual sources; second, to deepen our reflection and understanding of core Jewish values; and third, to be able to take these teachings into our daily life.
Each class will move from text study to practice, and will include a short hitbonenut meditation (self-inquiry), and a short writing exercise to help participants set goals for concretely embodying these teachings in their everyday lives.
COURSES BY SUBJECT
TESTIMONIALS
"The courses offered through Applied Jewish Spirituality not only provide a window into the vast world of Chasidic and mystical teachings, but translate the esoteric into practices that can be integrated into ones daily spiritual life. The source sheets for every class are a remarkable resource full of deep and powerful Torah to make the teachings accessible to learners of all backgrounds."
- Rabbi Adam Gindea
"In so many ways the AJS course I followed redefined 'learning' for me. This is because of the unique way our course leader synthesised rigorous scholarship with practical spiritual practice. Through his personal skills he also created a sense of a community amongst us all - no mean feat for online learning! I ended the course feeling transformed and inspired."
- Jyll Bradley
"Not only does AJS provide access to an incredibly vast and rich well of Jewish material, but the faculty are really all masters at distilling and effectively transmitting information that ordinarily would remain hidden and inaccessible to curious beginning students. That said, faculty at AJS enthusiastically welcome and cater to the beginners mind who might otherwise feel too intimidated, or perhaps a bit too shy wandering into a traditional beit midrash of learned scholars and other big-time ball players. One really does get the sense that there is a larger learning taking place that the course as a single entity - material, teachers, and students all - participates in. And the importance of this really can’t be understated because its the facilitation of that mutual transmission of mind, body, and spirit that underlies and upholds the integrity of the great worldly wisdom traditions. I don’t know if I would have a Jewish practice if it weren’t for AJS."
- Gabe Gould
GET IN TOUCH
Appreciation for use of images:
Transformative Prayer (Rannenu Tzadikim), Tanya (Alter Rebbe) and Rav Kook images by Sheva Chaya from Safed Glass
Glasses image by FotoRieth
Women and Torah image by Miriam Leibowitz
Aleph and Hebrew Calligraphy by Michel d'Anastasio
Sefirot and Tree of Life images by David Friedman from Kosmic Kabbalah
Ram and Calendar images by Federico Parolo from Deuteronomy Press
Prayer photo (Shemoneh Esrei) by Mazhar Zandsalimi
Hands photo from https://www.freepik.com/free-photos-vectors/people