Please note: To apply for our next rabbinic cohort, beginning January 2012, please click here, view the brochure here. If you have any questions about the cohort, plesae contact Rabbi Jonathan Slater at 914-478-7326 or jonathan@jewishspirituality.org.
Rabbinic Programming
Rabbis provide constant spiritual guidance and advice to others but often experience difficulty finding adequate avenues for their own, ongoing spiritual development. The Rabbinic Leadership Program at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality helps rabbis find structure, support and guidance for their own spiritual growth and, upon this foundation, helps them develop as spiritual guides and teachers for others.
145 prominent rabbis from across the country and across the denominational spectrum have now completed the two-year rabbinic program of retreats and interim study. Many remain involved with the Institute through our alumni hevrayah program. It offers semi-annual retreats, weekly texts for hevruta study and spiritual direction. These programs enable participants to share best practices, develop community, and deepen their understanding of Jewish spirituality as they support each other to nourish their own and their constituents' inner lives. A fouth cohort of rabbis began in July 2007.
The Rabbinic Leadership Program is led by an outstanding faculty, each of whom is deeply committed to reinvigorating American Jewish religious life. Core faculty members Rabbis Nancy Flam, Myriam Klotz, and Sheila Peltz Weinberg are joined by Rabbis Shefa Gold, Arthur Green, Ph.D., Myriam Klotz and Michael Strassfeld at different retreats over the eighteen months. Materials for study have been prepared by the faculty.
Goals
1. The Institute for Jewish Spirituality will help rabbis cultivate their own personal spiritual lives and provide tools for understanding the nature of the spiritual life in general.
2. The Institute for Jewish Spirituality will help rabbis apply what they learn through the Institute to their work situations, by way of new and deepened skills, insights and program ideas.
3. The Institute for Jewish Spirituality will support rabbis to influence their workplaces such that a focus on the inner life will be better understood and supported institutionally.
Strategies
1. In order to help rabbis cultivate their own spiritual lives and understand the nature of the spiritual life in general, we will come together as a "practicing community" to study Jewish texts; explore contemplative practices; cultivate specific middot, or characteristics of soul, such as equanimity, truth, generosity, humility, and open-heartedness; and read about, study and discuss these issues together.
2. In order to help rabbis apply what they learn through the Institute to their work situations, we will provide models of programs and leadership at the retreats; facilitate discussion that will help participants integrate relevant ideas and insights about spiritual leadership and spiritual guidance; and create a forum for the sharing of "best practices" that focus on helping rabbis' constituents develop their inner lives.
3. In order to help rabbis with institutional change that may need to take place in order to sustain congregants'/members' inner lives, we will share insights gained from previous IJS participants, and provide forums for reflection at the optional fifth retreat that will be scheduled at the close of the program. (This optional fifth retreat is a new initiative, responding to past rabbinic participants' feedback that an additional retreat focused on applications and issues in the workplace would be helpful.)
The Form of the Rabbinic Leadership Program
The Rabbinic Leadership Program is structured around four five-day retreats that take place over an eighteen-month period. In addition to the four five-day retreats, participants engage in interim work: a required weekly hevruta study of Hasidic texts, in addition to periodic reading about the spiritual life; a strongly encouraged monthly practice of receiving spiritual direction; access to faculty about relevant questions on an as-needed basis; and communication about study, practice and applications at work that take place on a closed e-mail list.
Description of the Program
As a result of the Institute's educational philosophy, the first year of the program is dedicated solely to personal spiritual work on the part of the rabbis themselves. Only with the third retreat are professional issues (e.g. issues of leadership, teaching, providing spiritual direction, etc.) introduced into the curriculum. An optional fifth retreat a full two years after the beginning of the program will allow participants a more sustained focus on issues of application and institutional transformation in the workplace.
The work of personal spiritual development is approached from three directions: creating a safe, honest, reliable community of fellow seekers; together exploring and engaging in a number of different spiritual practices (such as text study, prayer, meditation, yoga, spiritual direction); and learning to cultivate various characteristics of soul, or middot (such as equanimity, truth, generosity, humility, and open-heartedness).
"Opening the heart... it is a process that involves stumbling, closing... opening. Stopping and starting." — Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, The Seven Beggars
"My real self is my soul-self, and that soul-self is a part of the indivisible oneness of God. But how do I get in to that soul-self? The job is one of spiritual disrobing, stripping off outer layers, one after another, until I get to that deeper inner place. Stripping away the superficial, layer after layer, is a good kavvanah for meditation or tefillah. Get a fix on one of those layers at a time—it may be physical appearance, professional status, family role, or whatever—and let it float away. Then another and another, until Nothing is left." —Arthur Green, from IJS study materials