Classes

Efforts to dismantle racism are often comprised of education, advocacy, and systemic change. These efforts are not enough — it’s crucial that we also do the inner work necessary to change our habits of mind, body, and spirit to wholly dismantle racism. We have ancestral wisdom available to support this change; Mussar is the Jewish spiritual discipline designed to integrate what the head understands with what the heart feels through daily practice.

In the Jewish annual cycle, each month is intrinsically connected to the elements—and so are we. In each monthly session, we explored the “spiralinear” nature of time as a way to enliven our experience of Judaism and make meaning of the changing nature of life.

Rooted in the energies of the Jewish months and the phases of the moon, this series draws connections between Jewish time and our experience of the world in the present moment—inviting us into deeper connection with ourselves, our bodies, and nature. By cultivating an earth-based mindfulness practice, we can remain centered as we move through the seasons, whatever they may bring.

Faculty members of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality presented The Shofar Project: Awakening to Action for the New Year: four weeks of ongoing Jewish spiritual practice to prepare our inner lives for the challenges and joys of the upcoming Jewish year, 5785. Keshira hosted the fourth session of the series.

This was a four-week creative spiritual journey through the Hebrew month of Elul in preparation for the Jewish High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. During this season we opened our hearts to embrace the new and shed the old, awakening our spirits as we transformed and drew closer to the Divine. Together we delved into the unetanah tokef prayer from the High Holiday liturgy. Its refrain, "but repentance, prayer, and righteousness avert the severe decree," can be seen as how "teshuvah (return), tefilah (prayer), and tzedakah (justice) transform how we experience our lives.” We connected with each other and to the potency of this time in the Jewish calendar as we reflected, released, and renewed ourselves for the year to come.

During these weekly 90-minute virtual sessions, we engaged in the Jewish Studio Process, a unique methodology combining practices from the field of art therapy with a reimagined approach to Jewish learning, to cultivate our inherent creativity as a spiritual practice.

This September, tap into a special High Holidays series in our vibrant weekly Shevet Jewish Mindfulness Community, to prepare for the Jewish New Year with a welcoming community of young adults in their 20s and 30s. Together, we’ll embark on a powerful journey of reflecting on the past year and returning to our most authentic selves for the year ahead. This series is being co-facilitated by Rebecca Schisler and Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife.

Efforts to dismantle racism are often comprised of education, advocacy, and systemic change. These efforts are not enough —it’s crucial that we also do the inner work necessary to change our habits of mind, body, and spirit to wholly dismantle racism. We have ancestral wisdom available to support this change; Mussar is the Jewish spiritual discipline designed to integrate what the head understands with what the heart feels through daily practice.

Jewish time invites us to move in cycles within cycles, with deep imprints of fractal time. Across time and space, Jewish tradition marks time in various ways through mindful awareness, blessing and ritual, making meaning and beauty and, ultimately, uplifting the very holiness of the moment. In this series, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife facilitates a creative exploration of time and ritual, bringing together the Jewish Studio Process with opportunities to examine our relationships to time and ritual. By delving into a different Jewish ritual, considering both its origin and resonant modern application, and tying it to an aspect of time, participants are invited to steep in deep time, engage embodied ritual, and reclaim creativity as a sacred act. This class is for those who love to make art or ritual magic, and those who yearn to wonder at the intersection of time and space.

Together we are exploring the foundations of Judaism through a feminist lens, providing us a stable place from which to learn, study, practice, lead, create, ritualize and diverge. This class includes inquiries into traditional/historical practice in comparison and contrast to Priestess practice. This class is intended for anyone who wants to learn the basics of Jewish practice, history and tradition (including folx who are considering conversion) as well as anyone who is keen to reconsider the basics from an anti-oppressionist perspective.

On Solid Ground is going on hiatus for the 5785 / 2025-2026 year. Please sign up below if you'd like to be informed when the class is offered again.

This collaboration between the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and Dimensions Consulting, featured Yavilah McCoy with caucus support from Rabbi Myriam Klotz, Dr Andrea Jacobs, Yoshi Silverstein and Keshira!

This six month transformative, contemplative learning journey combined Jewish text, antiracism teaching, and opportunities to reflect, and offered participants an opportunity to integrate spiritual practice to support our collective work for the maintenance of an equitable, just, and healthy society.

With over 1,400 registrants, this program SOLD OUT.

Judaism Unbound launched the UnYeshiva to encourage deep exploration of 3,000 years of Jewish tradition and to support the creative experimentation necessary to shapy a compelling and sustainable Jewish future.

I was thrilled to be part of their Spring 2022 faculty with Shmita: Putting Ourselves in the Practice which started in mid-February 2022.

Or Halev offers a Jewish path to a more vibrant, whole and awakened life thorough mindfulness and innovative Jewish practice.

I was honoured to co-facilitate Sacred Action: Bringing Mindfulness Practice to Justice Work in winter 2022 and Autumn 2023.

The Institute for Jewish Spirituality hosted his five week program of Jewish spiritual practice grounded in teachings drawn from This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, by Rabbi Alan Lew z”l, the contemporary classic describing the spiritual arc of this period of the Jewish year. Hosted by IJS, all were welcome to join this free offering, which featured a different IJS leader each week, delving into the content and guiding practice.