|
TEACHERS
|
Reb Moshe Waldoks
Along with an infectious laugh, Reb Moshe brings to the rabbinate many years of experience as a teacher and academic. Co-editor of The Big Book of Jewish Humor, he has lectured widely on Jewish cultural renewal and the Jewish spirit. With his wife Anne, and their three daughters, Reb Moshe infuses our community with love, laughter, and joy. Reb Moshe completed his Doctorate in Eastern European Jewish Intellectual History at Brandeis University in 1984, and was ordained as a post-denominational Rabbi in the fall of 1996 by Rabbis Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Arthur Green and Everett Gendler. Dedicated to building bridges, Reb Moshe went to Dharamsala, India in October 1990 to participate in the first Jewish-Tibetan Buddhist encounter with the Dalai Lama. He is active in Jewish-Christian Dialogue, and in 1999 co-led a Jewish-Catholic Pilgrimage to Israel and Rome. He sits on the Executive Board of the Jewish Community Relations Council. Reb Moshe has been the Rabbi at Temple Beth Zion since January 1998. He also completed a two-year meditation course for Rabbis conducted by Sylvia Boorstein.
|
|
Seth Castleman
Seth Castleman is co-founder and guiding teacher of Nishmat Hayyim,: Breath of Life Jewish Meditation Collaborative of New England. Seth has taught meditation for 12 years locally and nationally in synagogues, retreat centers, and universities. He also gives professional trainings to social workers, educators, health care professionals, law enforcement personnel and first responders, as well as clergy. Seth works extensively with individuals, families, and communities facing significant difficulty, trauma or crisis. He focuses on difficulty, dysfunction and crisis within individuals as well as communities - not only as a place of improvement, but as the root of fundamental change. Seth founded and directed programs for incarcerated youth in New York City and women in California prisons. His post-disaster work has included families and first-responders at The World Trade Centers as well as urban and rural communities destroyed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Seth has trained in Jewish and other types of meditation in the US, Israel, and Asia. He spent a year and a half in intensive silent retreat, and has studied with many of the world's leading meditation masters. Seth has been formally trained as a meditation teacher, pastoral counselor and chaplain by Dr. Jack Kornfield, PhD. Castleman is published in a dozen anthologies, magazines and newspapers, and for many years performed for audiences as a critically acclaimed storyteller. He is currently working on a literary memoir on the spiritual path of brokenness.
|
|
Minna Bromberg
Minna Bromberg, PhD teaches Jewish meditation in synagogues and other Jewish communities throughout the US. In 2004, she completed a three-year Jewish Meditation Teachers Certification Program through Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley, California under the directorship of Dr. Avram Davis. In addition to teaching meditation, Minna is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College as well as a singer-songwriter, cantorial soloist, and voice teacher. In her work as a voice teacher, Minna works with individuals who wish to find their most authentic voice.
|
|
Sheila Katz (Yocheved)
Yocheved trained with Rabbi Shefa Gold to be a chant leader as part of a life-long delight in waking up. She first studied meditation and yoga decades ago as an undergrad at Brandeis University. At graduation, Rabbi Lawrence Kushner hired her as the first song-leader of Congregation Beth-El in Sudbury. Yocheved lived in Jerusalem for 5 years, and founded Re-evaluation Counseling as one of the first frameworks for bringing Israelis and Palestinians together in dialogue. During that time, she led workshops on this approach in Northern Ireland, Ireland, England, France, Sweden, Denmark, Italy and Greece. Part of her process of waking up was receiving a doctorate at Harvard University while raising three children.
Dr. Katz, Ph.D. is professor of Middle East History and Gender Studies at the Berklee College of Music, where she integrates meditation in courses on Music and Peace and on Contemplative and Mystical Traditions in World Civilizations. Her book, Women and Gender in Early Jewish and Palestinian Nationalism (University Press of Florida, 2003) is an alternative approach to the conflict. Yocheved's Jewish meditation practice currently combines concentration, mindfulness and chant anchored by week-long silent retreats currently in the two-year Elat Chayyim Advanced Meditation Program.
|
|
Roberta Isberg
Roberta Isberg practices psychiatry and has a longstanding interest in the use of meditation in medicine and psychotherapy. She received her M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1978 and completed her training in adult and child psychiatry at Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, in 1984. She completed psychoanalytic training at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute in 1993 and has a private practice in adult and child psychiatry in Brookline. She serves on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, teaching Child Psychiatry Fellows at Children's Hospital. She has been practicing Dialectical Behavioral Therapy at Two Brattle Center in Cambridge, since 2001, because this treatment uses the teaching and practice of mindfulness as a way to address psychological suffering. Dr. Isberg has had a personal meditation practice for over thirty years. She acquired most of her Jewish education as an adult, learning with her children as they attended Jewish Day School. At Nishmat Hayyim and Temple Beth Zion she is able to bring the awareness developed through meditation into Jewish practice.
|
|
Carl Woolf
Carl Woolf has studied Jewish Devotional Chanting with Rabbi Shefa Gold. His spiritual studies and practices include music-making, davening, meditation and movement.
He holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and a M.Sc. in Computer Science. His 'day-jobs' have included teaching philosophy, developing software, and busking in Harvard Square.
|
|
Natan Margalit
Natan Margalit has written and taught on innovative approaches to Jewish texts, Jewish spirituality, gender and Judaism and the environment. In 2003 he conceived and directed a Conference on Neo Hasidism. He has been affiliated with Jewish Renewal since 1999 and has taught at Elat Chayyim, the Aleph Kallah, Ohalah as well as in many synagogues across the county. He studied for many years in Israel and received rabbinic ordination at The Jerusalem Seminary in 1990. He earned a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 2001 in Near Eastern Studies. He has taught at Pardes Institute, the Yakar Learning Center, Bard College, the Reconstuctionist Rabbinical College and currently teaches at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Boston.
|
GUEST FACULTY
|
Sylvia Boorstein
Sylvia Boorstein is a beloved meditation teacher and bestselling author who has been teaching Mindfulness in Jewish venues since 1993 and has maintained a private psychotherapy practice since 1984. She is a member of Founding Faculty of Institute for Jewish Spirituality, where she advises and trains Faculty. She established Mindfulness Leadership Training courses at Elat Chayyim, The Jewish Community Center of the Upper West Side in NYC and has taught at the Rabbi in Training program of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The Author of over 10 books on meditation including: That's Funny, You Don't Look Buddhist: On Being a Faithful Jew and a Passionate Buddhist and her most recent book, Happiness Is an Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life (Ballantine Books).
Sylvia was a contributor to Beside Still Waters, an anthology of essays about meditation by Jews and Christians. Syliva authored the article, "Spiritual Journey, Teshuvah and Metta," in Worlds of Jewish Spirituality, Aronson, 1998. Sylvia shares her humor and joy at numerous conferences and as Scholar-in-residence at synagogues across the country. This June, Sylvia will be the recipient of a Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Philadelphia, PA.
Read an Interview with Sylvia Boorstein
Read more about Happiness Is an Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life
|
|
Rabbi Shefa Gold
Rabbi Gold received ordination from both the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomia. She is a leader in Aleph: the Alliance for Jewish Renewal and the director of The Center for Devotional, Energy and Ecstatic Practice. Rabbi Gold combines the depth of her Judaism with a background in numerous other spiritual traditions in her composing, teaching, and chant leading.
|
|
Rabbi Alan Lew
Rabbi Alan Lew is the founding director of Makor Or (Source of Light) Meditation Center and Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco. He is at the forefront of the movement to develop new forms of Jewish spiritual expression.
Rabbi Lew was ordained as a rabbi in 1988 at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and is the Past President of the Board of Rabbis of Northern California.
Rabbi Lew teaches meditation in Jewish contexts, in order to cultivate a deeper understanding of Jewish prayer and communal practice and to enhance spirituality in our everyday lives. Known as "The Zen Rabbi", Rabbi Lew has trained in Zazan meditation for more than 25 years. "Putting meditation in a Jewish context, inside a synagogue, inspires daily Jewish practice," says Lew. "Judaism has always borrowed techniques from other cultures when it served to make Judaism more vital."
Lew offers rigorous classes on the Talmud, Torah, and the cultural legacies of Judaism, scrutinizing subjects as varied as the role of prophecy in Judaism and meditations on the Book of Psalms. Rabbi Lew is the author of many books, including: One God Clapping (Kodansha,1999), an award-winning spiritual memoir; This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation, (Little Brown, 2003), a guide for the Jewish High Holidays and the soul's journey through life, death and renewal; and Be Still and Get Going, (Little Brown August, 2005), accessible teachings and practices in Jewish meditation drawn from Torah and Rabbinical texts; and several books of poetry.
Rabbi Lew's work using Zen meditation to enhance Jewish spirituality has been highlighted on programs such as ABC News, The MacNeil-Lehrer Report, the PBS news magazine Religion and Ethics Newsweekly, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Rabbi Lew served as moderator of Mosaic, CBS's weekly religious talk show and presently teaches at the Graduate Theological Union of the University of California at Berkeley.
Alan Lew is married to the novelist Sherril Jaffe, and has three children, a son, Steven, and daughters, Hannah and Malka.
|
|
Rabbi Meir Sendor
Rabbi Meir Sendor received his Ph.D from Harvard University where he studied medieval Jewish history, specifically the history of Jewish mysticism. Rabbi Sendor received his ordination at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University. He is a faculty member of Me'ah and the Me'ah Graduate Institute. As well, he is the rabbi of Young Israel in Sharon, MA, where he has been the spiritual leader for more than twenty years.
|
|
Jay Michaelson
Jay Michaelson is a Jewish educator whose integrates wisdom from many of the world's contemplative traditions, contemporary culture, and a deep commitment to spiritual practice and transformation. Jay Michaelson is the author of the book God in Your Body (Jewish Lights, 2006), founder of Nehirim: A Spiritual Initiative for GLBT Jews, and founding editor of Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture, recognized as a leading institution of the "New Jewish Culture." He holds an M.A. in Religious Studies from Hebrew University, as well as a J.D. from Yale and is presently a Ph.D. candidate in Jewish Thought at Hebrew University, a visiting professor at Boston University Law School, and a Ph.D. candidate in Jewish Thought at Yale University. Jay completed the Elat Chayyim Jewish Meditation Advanced Training program, has spent time at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, the Insight Meditation Society, and Spirit Rock. Among the spiritual teachers he has learned with are Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Rabbi David Cooper, and Sylvia Boorstein. Jay's current writing projects include Nondual Judaism, a manuscript in preparation, The Inflected Letters: Ten Heretical Tales, a collection of short stories; the academic study of American anti-legalism entitled Lawyers, Jews, and the Secret History of the Soul; and The Gate of Sadness, a book on sadness and the contemplative path.
|
|
Norman Fischer
Norman is co-founder with his friend Rabbi Alan Lew, of Makor Or Jewish Meditation Center in San Francisco (www.makoror.org/). He teaches meditation there and at the Elat Chayyim Jewish Spiritual Retreat Center. He uses contemplative practice to teach deepening access to Torah, Avodah, and Gemilut Hasidim (study, prayer, and compassionate action). He is author of "Zen-Inspired" Translations of the Psalms (Viking Penguin, 2002) as well as many other books of poetry and prose.
Norman Fischer is a poet and Senior Teacher at the San Francisco Zen Center. He is the founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation as well as teacher and chair of the board of the Zen Hospice Project.
Norman is particularly interested in the application of contemplative practice to issues of Western culture and everyday life in the world and writes essays on topics ranging from racism to monasticism to romance. Norman believes in the possibility of living a fully committed religious life that includes family, work, and a passionate engagement in the world. He is active in interreligious dialog joining His Holiness Dalai Lama at many national and international conferences that address the challenges of our times.
|
|
