Powered by
CALENDAR & FESTIVALS
These are our most popular courses in this area:
Year-round course
Join any time
2 Classes per month
Click here for details
What are the unique spiritual and psychological opportunities and challenges of each month and festival?
What are the practices that our tradition recommends for each month, to maximise our potential in every area of our lives?
In this course, we will explore the depth and breadth of Torah and Kabbalah, and integrate their wisdom with insights from the contemporary mindfulness world.
Every month, we will explore a broad and deep range of texts, and participants will receive detailed and clear practice instructions for meditative and creative practices that will help to effect tangible changes in our inner lives, our routine activities and our everyday interactions with others.
Five-class course
Ongoing registration
​
Click here for details
The High Holidays are a potent time for personal growth in all areas of life, including interpersonal relationships, our own self-concept, lifestyle choices, and our spiritual lives.
This course will help us access the powerful opportunities for insight and growth that these holidays offer.
Through a combination of in-depth textual study and embodied exercises and meditations, we will explore the core qualities and practices of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, allowing us to engage with this season in a way that is deep, meaningful, and that touches our lives.
PREPARING FOR LIBERATION
WITH THE PIASECZNER
Yiscah Smith
Eight-class course
Ongoing registration
Click here for details
​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).
We will focus on excerpts from his work, Hachsharat HaAvrachim (Training for Students) that empower us to access the deeper meaning of this period leading up to Pesach (Passover), the Holiday of our Liberation – cultivating a sense of inner freedom to live a life of truth, awareness of the Divine within and becoming faithful to our spiritual center, our soul.
Through textual learning and experiential practice, in this course we will explore how to train ourselves to become more sensitive and open to allowing ourselves to explore and inhabit our inner world.
INTRODUCTION
TO KABBALAH:
THE SEFIROT OF
THE TREE OF LIFE
Rabbi Daniel Silverstein
Eight-class course
Ongoing registration
​
Click here for details
How can the primary system of Kabbalah help us to understand and refine our inner selves, our creativity and our relationships?
The Sefirot of the Tree of Life are often described as attributes of the Divine, or gateways, through which the Divine brings existence into being. The Sefirot can also be understood as archetypes or character traits, which we can identify and refine in our own selves.
By learning about each Sefirah and how they may manifest in our internal and external lives, we will grow intellectually and experientially, internalizing the Kabbalists' potent wisdom to enrich every aspect of our day-to-day existence. Together, we will explore the Sefirot in theory and practice, learning how they were understood by several generations of Kabbalists, and how they may manifest in our internal lives, relationships, creative or vocational pursuits.
Eight-class course
Ongoing registration
​
Click here for details
R' Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, sometimes referred to as the Rav, was the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel. He is revered as a scholar, thinker, legal authority, kabbalist, poet, and a modern day prophet.
He writes, "On the holy night of the festival, we are full of redemption, full of a higher freedom. Our freedom liberates our spirit...Our redemption is universal - the redemption of all worlds."
In this online course with Yiscah Smith, we will explore, through Rav Kook’s commentaries on the Passover Haggadah, the spiritual practice of cultivating mindfulness to our innermost selves, which will then birth the consciousness of remaining faithful to that sense of deeper being.
RETURNING
WITH LOVE:
TESHUVA M 'AHAVA
Rabbi Daniel Silverstein
Six-class course
Ongoing registration
​
Click here for details
Teshuva is returning to our highest self and our Divine potential. It is a central idea and practice in Judaism, and our sages teach that when motivated by love (ahava), it is a deeply powerful, transformative process.
Our calendar invites us to focus on Teshuva with particular attention during the Fall, as we prepare for the key festivals of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.
These High Holidays are crucial opportunities to engage with Teshuva, to choose who we want to be and how to live going forward.
​Together, we will explore how to open ourselves to lasting changes in our lives that Teshuva M'Ahava can bring, from the wisdom of the Torah, ancient sages, Kabbalists, Chasidic Masters and contemporary teachers.
Seven-class course
Ongoing registration
Click here for details
Kabbalistic teachings view “the Omer," the seven weeks between Pesach and Shavuot, as a potent season of self-cultivation and growth; a period focused on bringing attention to the Divine qualities within ourselves as a preparation for receiving the revelation of Torah. The seven weeks of the Sefirah (counting) are mirrored by the seven lower Sefirot - the Divine energies that are expressed throughout Creation, and that form our very personalities and self. This course guides participants through the sefirot, uncovering layers of meaning to help understand what they are, how they live inside of us, and how we can attune ourselves to our own innate Divine nature. The course includes text study and guided practices to form a holistic learning experience.
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.