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“When we share our spiritual journey with a community, it helps us face life with more wisdom, compassion, and inner strength.”
We are taking a joyful step toward fostering that well-being by becoming a part of the IJS Community Network. Through the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, our members now have access to tools that integrate mindfulness with Jewish teaching.
Our clergy have been on this journey with you and are excited to share even more ways to cultivate our inner life, deepen our awareness, and move through the world with more compassion and purpose. Stay tuned for free programs and resources that will help us add deeper meaning to Jewish practices and connect more mindfully to each other.
What does this mean for our members? It gives you access to a number of ongoing, free programs of offerings, ongoing spiritual practice, and perks! This is true for younger adults, young families, empty nesters, and retirees; so, everyone!
👉Lunchtime Mindfulness
The IJS Daily Sit: Jewish Mindfulness Meditation
Weekdays on Zoom, 12:30-1 PM ET (9:30-10 AM PT), plus 15 mins of Q and A
An expert Jewish mindfulness teacher offers a short teaching and a brief mindfulness meditation to help us breathe, settle, and respond more wisely to today’s challenges. Includes prayers for healing and an opportunity to recite Mourner’s Kaddish. No experience required. Try us out! Click here to register for the Zoom link and reminders.
Mindful Yoga
The IJS Jewish Yoga Studio
Weekly on Zoom, Mondays 11:00–11:45 AM ET (8-8:45 AM PT)
Led by expert yoga teacher Cantor Lizzie Shammash, this all-levels, drop-in session is informed by Jewish spiritual teachings and designed to relieve stress, increase awareness of breath, and ground in our bodies. No experience required. Click here to register for the Zoom link and reminders.
Affinity Spaces for Marginalized Communities
Segula: LGBTQ+ Jewish Meditation
Monthly on Thursdays, 12:00–12:45 PM ET (9:00–9:45 AM PT)
Join Jes Golden, Ph.D. and guest leaders for a monthly Jewish mindfulness meditation session by and exclusively for those who identify as LGBTQ+. No experience required. Click here to register for the Zoom link and reminders.
Shalem: Jewish Meditation for People with Disabilities
Monthly on Wednesdays, 1:30–2:00 PM ET (10:30–11:00 AM PT) + 15 mins Q and A
Join IJS Senior Core Faculty Rabbi Sam Feinsmith and outstanding guest instructors for this monthly affinity space for Jewish mindfulness practice for anyone living with disabilities and/or chronic illness and pain. No experience required. Click here to register for the Zoom link and reminders.
Sharing Our Torah: Jews of Color Mindfulness Affinity Sit
Monthly on Wednesdays, 12:00–1:00 PM ET (9:00–10 AM PT)
Join other Jews of Color (JoC) for a monthly opportunity to connect and slow down for a mindful pause and for connection with each other. Co-led by Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife and Rabbi Sass Brown, and other guest JoC leaders. No experience required. Click here to register for the Zoom link and reminders.
Mindfulness for Younger Adults
Shevet: Weekly Jewish Mindfulness Community for Young Adults
Weekly on Zoom, Mondays 8:00-8:30 PM ET (5:00–5:30 PM PT) plus 15 minutes of Q and A
Join a community of young adults in their 20s and 30s for a short Jewish mindfulness practice, hosted by IJS Core Faculty Rebecca Schisler and guided each week by an expert teacher of Jewish spirituality and mindfulness. No experience required. Click here to register for the Zoom link and reminders.
👉Meditation Starter Course
The Gift of Awareness
IJS Community Network members receive complimentary access to this IJS flagship course, an eight-week introduction to Jewish meditation. This course is a perfect starter session for a group program for your Sisterhood/Brotherhood, Chavurot, or singles and empty-nesters. Click here for more information. To take advantage of this opportunity, please contact us for a unique coupon code for this program.
Temple Beth Sholom is honored to have received a Torah from the Memorial Scrolls Trust in London. This Torah was saved after the Holocaust and is now a valuable addition to our Torah collection. There is no accurate description from where this Torah originates, but we do know the region. According to the Jewish Museum in Prague, our scroll remains an orphan from an unknown town in Bohemia and Moravia.
We read from this special Torah twice during the year. The first time is on Yom Kippur afternoon, and the second is during our Annual Confirmation Service. For more information on the Memorial Trust, please click here.
In 1942, curators in the Central Jewish Museum in Prague, working under desperate conditions, sent out a call to the Jews in the regions of Bohemia and Moravia, Czechoslovakia, to send their Judaica and artifacts to the museum for safe keeping. The community who sent these items to the museum must have hoped that the treasures would be protected and one day be returned to their original homes. The curators, however, “must have suspected that they were inheriting the legacy of the dead…their work became an act of spiritual resistance.”[i] They thought they were saving Judaism by saving the scrolls from plunder and destruction.
Under Nazi supervision, collating under near impossible conditions, everything was cataloged meticulously. Every scroll was labeled in Czech and German, giving the name of the community and congregation from which it came. All of the museum’s curators and catalogers were eventually transported to Terezin and Auschwitz, with only one survivor. After the defeat of the Nazis, the scrolls remained for 20 years in the disused Michle Synagogue near Prague, until the communists, desperate for money, stumbled across them. The scrolls were not theirs to sell, but that hardly mattered. A philanthropist, Ralph Yablon, brought them to London. Some were rotten, torn, damaged by fire or water, nibbled by rodents – a grim testimony to the fate of the people who had once prayed with them. Inside one was a note: “Please God help us in these troubled times.”
Of the 1,564 scrolls, 216 lost their tags somewhere along their way and cannot be traced to any community. They became known as orphan scrolls.