SESSION 1 || Chesed: What Love Makes Possible 

Loving Kindness as a Foundation for Spiritual Growth and Possibility

Teacher: Shira Abramowitz

What is love? The timeless question of mystics and poets and extremely-catchy songs for millenia. But what does it mean for us, day to day, as we live our contemplative practice? 

For our opening session, we’ll introduce a few aspects of the course - the Sefirot, the flow of the class, and you, the participants. We’ll then explore a teaching about the Sefirah of Chesed (Lovingkindness) and reflect on what love makes possible when it sits at the foundation of our lives. What can our sages teach us about the role of brokenheartedness in living from love? How does living from a well of love give us the grounds for moral courage? Through guided embodied practice and time for reflection, we’ll ignite an ongoing practice of feeling love and belovedness in our day to day life and seeing what becomes possible when we do.

SESSION 2 || Gevurah: Strength, Fear, & Possibility

Teacher(s): Shira Abramowitz +  Guest Teacher, Rabbi Shir Meira Feit

Fear, Courage, and the Body as a Gateway to Inner Strength

How might gevurah, strength, be a gateway to freedom? How can we feel our strength in our body, and what is the relationship between fear and strength? In this class on Gevurah we'll explore how we can turn toward fear as a pathway to uncovering our strength.  

Gevurah is also defined as boundaries, separation. We may think of boundaries as in place to keep things away, but what else do they make possible? How do sturdy and strong boundaries relate to our deepest yearning and desire, and our capacity for love?  

Drawing on rabbinic teachings, we'll find our own language for strength, boundaries, and yearning, and uncover what Gevurah is offering us right now. Joined by Rabbi Shir Meira Feit, this class will begin with music and invite us to explore Gevurah from the inside out, beginning with somatic experience: what is present in this moment, and can I be with it?

SESSION 3 || Tiferet: Balance, Compassion, & Desire

Finding Balance in the Tension Between Compassion and Boundaries

Teacher(s): Shira Abramowitz +  Guest Teacher, Yael Shy

As we dive into Tiferet, we’ll explore how we find balance and spiritual integrity in fractured times. Balance can often be thought of as even scales, but perhaps a more apt concept of balance is the quality we need when surfing a wave, when finding a foothold on an ever-changing ride beneath us. Nowhere is this more alive than in our desires, where we're constantly navigating competing pulls: immediate pleasure and long-term fulfillment, freedom and commitment, compassion for others and the boundaries that keep us whole. In learning to ride that tension rather than resolve it, we begin to open to the beauty that was there all along, around us and within us. Together with guest teacher Yael Shy, we'll explore how our desires, honestly met, can become a doorway into greater compassion, integrity, and aliveness.

SESSION 4 || Netzach: Sacred Endurance 

Cultivating the Sacred, Soul-driven Endurance to Persist as the Path Unfolds.

Teacher(s): Shira Abramowitz + Guest Teacher, Rabbi Chaplain Ben Perlstein

In our class on Netzach, we’ll explore themes of sacred persistence. Together with our guest teacher - Rabbi, Chaplain, and black belt martial artist Ben Perlstein, we’ll hear how an interweaving of Jewish mysticism and martial arts provide a map for how we can stabilize our core and endure through challenge. Connecting to the mystical qualities of Netzach, we’ll examine how this inner sturdiness and persistence can provide a foundation for faith in uncertain times.  

SESSION 5 || Hod: Awe, Gratitude, and Expression  

Seeing Beauty and Letting Gratitude Guide Us Home

Teacher(s): Shira Abramowitz + Guest Teacher, Rabbi Benjamin Barnett

Gratitude can be more than a statement of appreciation - in practice, it can become a way of changing our sensory reality and experience of the world. As we gather for a contemplation of Hod, we’ll tap into the ways gratitude can be a deep homecoming. We’ll practice resting in a sense of wonder, both zooming into the microscopic beauty of our day to day and zooming out into an expanded way of seeing and being in and with the world.

SESSION 6 || Yesod: Connection and the Relational Life  [TUESDAY May 5th]

Mindful Relationships, Interweaving Connection as a Foundation for Life 

Teachers: Shira Abramowitz + Guest Teacher, Gayle Karen Young

Our lives are inherently relational. Biologically, we’re social beings, with areas of brain activity reflecting the way we mirror others, empathize with the pain of loved ones, and experience the pain of social disconnection. Mystics across cultures seem to understand this, and expand our concept of relationality beyond interpersonal and into the realm of relationship with the divine, and with life itself. Our Jewish tradition teaches that we are co-creators in life, through our intimate relationship with the divine and with the divine in each other. 

In this mindful exploration of the relationality in our lives, we'll be joined guest teacher, Gayle Karen Young, to examine how we can become more rooted, more porous, and more connected. We’ll encounter both how mindfulness can deepen and enhance the human relationships in our lives, and how our practice helps us taste the true nature of our relationship with life, herself.

SESSION 7 || Malchut: Embodiment, Leadership, and Becoming 

Becoming a Vessel for Light

Teacher: Shira Abramowitz

For our final class of the series, we’ll gather together for a deep reflection of our journey, our pathway to revelation. We’ll acknowledge the ways we have unraveled, the skin we’ve shed, and the ways we are becoming anew. Cultivating the quality of Malchut, we’ll invite in an embodied experience of leadership and of becoming the vessels for light to shine into a stormy world.