Twelve Day Jewish Meditation Retreat
December 10 - December 21, 2023
Brian Arnell, Sheila Katz, Rabbis Batsheva Meiri and Jeff Roth
Contact:
brian@awakenedheartproject.org
About the Retreat
The sight and sound of the ocean is a wonderful place to deeply explore the nature of life, and what a precious gift it is to be here. Often times, being present to the joy of being in the world is not our day to day experience. It is easy to get caught up in the challenges that naturally accompany each day of our lives.
Spending twelve days in contemplative practice is a wonderful way to gain balance in our lives and cultivate a grateful heart, which can see the truth of our lives more clearly. This practice opens a heart of wisdom and compassion, propelling us to a life of loving-kindness. This twelve day meditation retreat will give you the tools and the time to delve inward and cultivate these qualities.
Using the vehicle of silence, and a variety of Jewish meditation approaches, this retreat will help you to look deeply into your own life. The retreat includes daily periods of prayer, chant and yoga. Daily instruction in meditation will help guide both beginning and advanced practitioners into the sacred space of the retreat process. Throughout the retreat we will maintain social silence. There will also be times for questions and answers, as well as private interviews with the instructors.
Our hope is that a significant number of people will want to sit for the full twelve days. Preference will be given to those sitting the entire retreat – shorter stays will be considered only when space permits.
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About the Teachers
Rabbi Jeff Roth worked with Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi for eight years as the director of, first B’nai Or Religious Fellowship and then the renamed P’nai Or. He was ordained by Reb Zalman and by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He was the co-founder of Elat Chayyim-the Jewish Spiritual Retreat Center, where he served as Executive Director and Spiritual Director for 15 years. Currently he is the founder and Director of The Awakened Heart Project for Contemplative Judaism. He is the co-leader of the Deepening Contemplative Practice Intensive-3 which is a year long program of retreats and weekly practice sessions. He has facilitated of over 200 Jewish meditation retreats. He is the author of, Jewish Meditation Practices for Everyday Life and Me, Myself and God from Jewish Lights Publishing.
Rabbi Batsheva H. Meiri, is a 24-year veteran congregational rabbi in Asheville, NC. For the last decade, her primary focus has been the mindfulness training she has pursued in various Jewish, Buddhist and secular settings and discovering the ways those practices can inform and shape the life of the synagogue community she leads. Her practice and teaching draws from the training she has received at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Awakened Heart Project, Or Halev, Spirit Rock, True Nature Education and Asheville Mindful Living. In the last 4 years, she has co-taught numerous retreats in both Asheville and around the United States alongside her teachers and colleagues.
Brian Arnell re-connected with Judaism in the late 70’s when he joined a Jewish renewal community in Portland Oregon. In the ‘80’s he was one of the founders of P’nai Or of Portland, a renewal congregation. In 1998, he moved full-time to the Elat Chayyim retreat center in New York’s Hudson Valley and began intensive study of Jewish contemplative practice. He left the retreat center in 2006 and moved to Philadelphia. He is the Senior Teacher of Springboard Meditation Sangha.
Sheila H. Katz, PhD, (aka “Yocheved”) loves finding teachings of meditation in Hebrew texts and traditions. She got hooked on exploring the roots of suffering and awakening consciousness from reading Buber’s I and Thou at age 14. As a Berklee Professor of Contemplative Studies, her courses explore non-dual strands of religious wisdom traditions in global history. Her work with Palestinians and Israelis (Connecting with the Enemy: a Century of Palestinian-Israeli Joint Nonviolence) illuminates how attending to suffering can open paths to compassionate action. She is a co-founding teacher of Nishmat Hayyim (“Breath of Life”) meditation community. Her doctorate is from Harvard University in Middle East History which she taught for 36 years. She co-leads the annual 3-week retreat of the Awakened Heart Project. Sheilahannahkatz.Com