Jewish mindfulness and meditation are the specialties of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and death happens to be ours here at Shomer Collective. What better pair can you think of around Yom Kippur, our solemn death-rehearsal holiday? 

Death is scary, and much of our culture avoids the topic altogether. By sitting with our mortality, we allow ourselves greater access to the fullness of life. We hope you’ll join us live this Erev Yom Kippur.

The 30-minute guided group meditation will be followed by a recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish. The session will end with a brief Q&A for anyone wishing to ask questions of the leaders. 

Sign up for notification of daily meditation links from Institute for Jewish Spirituality, or join live on the day via YouTube.

Jewish mindfulness and meditation are the specialties of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and death happens to be ours here at Shomer Collective. What better pair can you think of around Yom Kippur, our solemn death-rehearsal holiday? 

Recording

Death is scary, and much of our culture avoids the topic altogether. By sitting with our mortality, we allow ourselves greater access to the fullness of life. We hope you’ll join us live this Erev Yom Kippur.

The 30-minute guided group meditation will be followed by a recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish. The session will end with a brief Q&A for anyone wishing to ask questions of the leaders. 

Jewish mindfulness and meditation are the specialties of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and death happens to be ours here at Shomer Collective. What better pair can you think of around Yom Kippur, our solemn death-rehearsal holiday? 

Death is scary, and much of our culture avoids the topic altogether. By sitting with our mortality, we allow ourselves greater access to the fullness of life. Join us for either or both sessions.

The 30-minute guided group meditation will be followed by a recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish. The session will end with a brief Q&A for anyone wishing to ask questions of the leaders. 

12:30pm - 1:15pm EST
9:30am - 10:15am PST

Jewish mindfulness and meditation are the specialties of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, and death happens to be ours here at Shomer Collective. What better pair can you think of around Yom Kippur, our solemn death-rehearsal holiday? 

Death is scary, and much of our culture avoids the topic altogether. By sitting with our mortality, we allow ourselves greater access to the fullness of life. Join us for either or both sessions.

The 30-minute guided group meditation will be followed by a recitation of the Mourner’s Kaddish. The session will end with a brief Q&A for anyone wishing to ask questions of the leaders. 

12:30pm - 1:15pm EST
9:30am - 10:15am PST

Join the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and Shomer Collective for two daily meditations on the themes of impermanence and endings as we transition into the New Year. Through engaging in Jewish wisdom and meditating on the utility of reflecting on death to live a life of greater meaning and connection, we will strive to experience the power of lessening fear around contemplating our own mortality.

The meditation on Monday, October 3, will be led by Rabbi Myriam Klotz, and on Tuesday, October 4 (the eve of Yom Kippur), by Rabbi Marc Margolius, members of the IJS Core Faculty.  Each meditation will take place from 12:30-1 pm ET, ending with an opportunity for mourners to recite the Mourner's Kaddish, and followed by a brief Q and A session with the leaders from 1-1:15 pm ET.  

These sessions will be live streamed on the IJS YouTube channel, with recordings posted there as well. Alternatively, click here to receive the Zoom link and reminders for these sessions, which are part of ongoing series of daily meditations offered by IJS led by a variety of outstanding Jewish mindfulness meditation teachers. 

Join the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and Shomer Collective for two daily meditations on the themes of impermanence and endings as we transition into the New Year. Through engaging in Jewish wisdom and meditating on the utility of reflecting on death to live a life of greater meaning and connection, we will strive to experience the power of lessening fear around contemplating our own mortality.

The meditation on Monday, October 3, will be led by Rabbi Myriam Klotz, and on Tuesday, October 4 (the eve of Yom Kippur), by Rabbi Marc Margolius, members of the IJS Core Faculty.  Each meditation will take place from 12:30-1 pm ET, ending with an opportunity for mourners to recite the Mourner's Kaddish, and followed by a brief Q and A session with the leaders from 1-1:15 pm ET.  

These sessions will be live streamed on the IJS YouTube channel, with recordings posted there as well. Alternatively, click here to receive the Zoom link and reminders for these sessions, which are part of ongoing series of daily meditations offered by IJS led by a variety of outstanding Jewish mindfulness meditation teachers. 

Yom Kippur brings us in touch with our own mortality: asking who will live, who will die; wearing white akin to the burial shrouds, refraining from food, drink, and pleasurable activities. Service as part of a Chevra Kadisha (holy burial society) also brings us face to face with death. Join us for a conversation with Sally Berkovic, author of Death Duties: The Chevra Kadisha Jewish Burial Society: What Being Around the Dead Taught Me About Life and Sarit Wishnevski, Executive Director of Kavod v’Nichum as we explore some of the unexpected parallels between Yom Kippur and the Chevra Kadisha.

Speakers:

Sally Berkovic is the daughter of Slovakian Holocaust survivors and grew up in Melbourne, Australia. After living in New York and Jerusalem, an epistolary romance brought her to London where she has been for nearly 30 years. Since 2009, she has been the CEO of the Rothschild Foundation Hanadiv Europe, a foundation that supports Jewish heritage and culture across Europe. She is the author of 2 books - Under My Hat -a mixture of memoir, sociology, history and Jewish texts to explore the impact of feminism on orthodox Judaism, and Death Duties, about her involvement with the Chevra Kadisha. Her writings are collected on her site https://sallyberkovic.com/

Sarit Wishnevski (she/her) is the Executive Director of Kavod v’Nichum. Prior to joining the organization Sarit trained as an end-of-life doula through INELDA (International End Of Life Doula Association) and produced a podcast and a newsletter called The Be.Side Project which focused on where Judaism intersected with the end of life. Sarit has worked for a number of Jewish organizations that seek to weave connections to ancient Jewish rituals and values through modern connection and understanding. Sarit lives in Maplewood, NJ with her partner, Ari and their two-year-old daughter, Adira. She is a member of the Chevra Kadisha at Congregation Beth El in South Orange, NJ.

Hosted by High Holidays @Home featuring Rabbi Melanie Levav

The rituals of Yom Kippur – fasting, wearing white, refraining from acts of pleasure, reciting prayers of confession, function as an annual dress rehearsal for death.

In the field of psychology, “positive life review” is a tool used to promote reflection on one’s past in order to make peace with the present. Using our own positive life review as well as a reflection on our mortality, we will create personal Yom Kippur confessions to prepare for entering the new year.

Everyone who registers will receive the Zoom link and a recording of the webinar. Pen and paper optional.

Preparations preceding the high holidays encourage us to take an accounting of our soul in the weeks leading up to Yom Kippur, on which we enact a dress rehearsal for death. When it comes to planning for end of life, there are often things we don’t know and even more things that we don’t know we don’t know. Join lawyer Johanna Sanders for a primer on what to consider from a legal perspective, in conversation with Rabbi Melanie Levav from a Jewish perspective. Leave the session with a to-do list and peace of mind. 

Speaker

Johanna Sanders is principal at The Law Office of Johanna Sanders, Esq., PLLC. Her practice is focused on drafting estate planning documents (including wills, trusts, powers of attorney, healthcare proxies, living wills) as well as probate and estate administration. Sanders holds a Juris Doctorate from Fordham Law School, where she was a Stein Scholar, and she holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Binghamton University.

For the past ten years, Sanders has been involved in advocacy and research for a range of issues affecting LGBTQ+ communities. Most recently, as Director of Policy & Organizing at The Vaid Group, Sanders co-led The National LGBTQ Anti-Poverty Action Network and served on the study team for The National LGBTQ+ Women*s Community Survey. In law school, Sanders worked on civil rights impact litigation at Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, on housing and social security disability matters at Brooklyn Legal Services in their LGBT/HIV Advocacy Unit, and traveled to Dilley, Texas with the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project to assist with legal representation at the Mexican border.

Sanders is a member of the Trusts and Estates Law Section of the New York State Bar Association, the Queens County Bar Association and LGBT Bar NY. Sanders served on the Board of Directors for Congregation Beit Simchat Torah.  Sanders is admitted to practice law in New York and New Jersey only.

Yom Kippur as Dress Rehearsal for Death: Lessons From the Pandemic
Jewish tradition considers Yom Kippur to be a "dress rehearsal" for our death: we refrain from eating and drinking, washing and pleasure, we wear white, evoking the image of shrouds. So too, this pandemic has forced us to grapple with how close we are to death on any given day. Join us for a session with Rabbi Kara Tav, hailed by the New York Times as one of "the men and women who run toward the dying" for her frontline hospital chaplaincy work, as we consider the value of confronting our mortality to help us live lives of greater meaning and connection.

This is session 3 of the 3-part series, Awakening to the New Jewish Year: Living Well in the Face of Mortality. The new Jewish year, 5782, begins in the evening of September 6. As we enter the season of reflection on the Jewish calendar, join us for a 3-part series on living well in the face of mortality. Starting with the work of taking a spiritual inventory, continuing with the deathbed stories of the Hasidic masters, and concluding with a look at how the pandemic has helped us to face our own inevitable end in new ways, we will explore the depths of Jewish wisdom to help us enter the new year open to the realities of our lives.

Taught by: Rabbi Kara Tav, BCC
NYU Langone Hospital, Manager of Spiritual Care

Born and raised in Canada, Rabbi Tav has moved around the globe, settling most recently in New York City. Here, she and her husband Kobi raised their daughter Ella, who made Aliyah 4 years ago. After a twenty year career as a Jewish Educator, Rabbi Kara fulfilled her childhood aspiration to become a rabbi. Once in Rabbinical School (JTS '10), she followed her passion to become a Board Certified, multi-faith, healthcare chaplain. Spiritual care and counseling is where the cross-section of God, Torah and Acts of Kindness meet for her. Rabbi Tav has trained extensively and held a range of Spiritual Care positions in New York CIty's public and private medical centers. She currently serves as the Manager of Spiritual Care and Palliative Care chaplain at NYU Langone Hospital, Brooklyn.

Deathbed Wisdom of the Hasidic Masters: The Book of Departure
Join Shomer Collective for a special pre-high holiday teaching from Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow and Rabbi Joel Baron, translators of The Book of Departure (Sefer haHistalkut), first published in Hebrew in 1930. The book is a compilation of end of life stories of 42 holy teachers who died between 1760 an 1904; the stories shed light on Jewish wisdom about death, the afterlife, and how to care for people nearing death. As we prepare for Yom Kippur, the day on which we traditionally rehearse for our own death, come learn from contemporary translators of the Hasidic masters to help deepen your own knowledge and practice. 

This is session 2 of the 3-part series, Awakening to the New Jewish Year: Living Well in the Face of Mortality. The new Jewish year, 5782, begins in the evening of September 6. As we enter the season of reflection on the Jewish calendar, join us for a 3-part series on living well in the face of mortality. Starting with the work of taking a spiritual inventory, continuing with the deathbed stories of the Hasidic masters, and concluding with a look at how the pandemic has helped us to face our own inevitable end in new ways, we will explore the depths of Jewish wisdom to help us enter the new year open to the realities of our lives.

Taught by: Rabbi Sara Paasche-Orlow and Rabbi Joel Baron
Sara Paasche-Orlow is the Director of Spiritual Care at Hebrew SeniorLife. In this position, she established the nation's only Jewish geriatric clinical pastoral education (CPE) program accredited by ACPE, Inc. and has placed chaplains and CPE students throughout the HSL system. Rabbi Sara was ordained in the Conservative Movement at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and has focused her work on serving Jews of all backgrounds and denominations.

Rabbi Joel Baron is a hospice chaplain at Hebrew Senior Life (HSL) Hospice Care in Boston. A second career rabbi, his resume includes stints as publisher of two leading medical journals, the North American edition of The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine.

Preparing for the End and a New Beginning: Awakening the Soul
The month prior to the new Jewish year is a time of introspection, in which we take an accounting of our soul, identifying who we have been and how we have acted in the past year. We listen to the cry of the shofar, the ram's horn, daily during this month, awakening our souls ahead of the new year. It is also the time in which we begin the process of teshuva, often translated as repentance, but literally, return, as in returning to ourselves and who we are meant to be. Join us to explore how this auspicious time on the Jewish calendar can enhance our ability to live well in the face of mortality. 

This is session 1 of the 3-part series, Awakening to the New Jewish Year: Living Well in the Face of Mortality. The new Jewish year, 5782, begins in the evening of September 6. As we enter the season of reflection on the Jewish calendar, join us for a 3-part series on living well in the face of mortality. Starting with the work of taking a spiritual inventory, continuing with the deathbed stories of the Hasidic masters, and concluding with a look at how the pandemic has helped us to face our own inevitable end in new ways, we will explore the depths of Jewish wisdom to help us enter the new year open to the realities of our lives. 

Taught by: Rabbi Melanie Levav
Rabbi Melanie Levav, founding executive director of the Shomer Collective, powered by Natan, is a board-certified chaplain and licensed social worker specializing in end of life care and conversations.