Slow down and explore life’s deepest truths in a warm and supportive Jewish environment with Rabbi Jay Michaelson, Miriam Eisenberger, Rabbi Shir Feit, and Bob Pileggi.

Our daily schedule includes several hours of sitting and walking meditation, soulful Jewish prayer (davennen’), interviews with teachers, and optional yoga. The retreat is held in warm, supportive silence, and we ask that you turn off your devices and refrain from communication during the five days of retreat.

The main form of meditation taught on this retreat is mindfulness, an approach originally derived from Buddhist traditions but now widespread in secular, Jewish, and other contexts.  Mindfulness brings forth the natural capacity to notice whatever is happening in your experience with kind, non-judgmental presence. It can lead to profound insights into your personality, the causes (and relief) of stress in your life, even the fundamental facts of existence itself.  On this retreat, we cultivate and deepen mindfulness in forty-five minute sitting meditations, periods of walking meditation, and throughout the day.

This is also a Jewish retreat. In addition to daily davennen’ sessions in the Jewish Renewal style, we infuse our teaching with Jewish mystical traditions, contextualize our insights in Jewish language of holiness and the Divine, and build an inclusive Jewish community together. We welcome people with all types of Jewish observance and none, Jews and non-Jews, those who connect with “God” language and those disillusioned with religion, new and experienced meditators, and a community that is diverse in age, race, background, and sexual and gender identities. Throughout the retreat, participants are invited to explore the sacred in the diverse ways that speak to them.

This retreat is conducted in the tradition of our teachers, Rabbi David Cooper z”l and Shoshana Cooper.