Calendar
Wrapping Ourselves in What We Value: Spiritual Preparation for the High Holidays
This Elul, we will come together in community for four weeks of study, conversation, and practice to stir our hearts and minds and prepare our souls to meet the Jewish New Year of 5786. Each year, the High Holidays usher us into a time of fresh starts and rebirth, and the Hebrew month of Elul is our time to step back, ask the questions that are sitting on our hearts, examine our lives, our relationships, our work, and reach for practices and habits that will guide us towards our better selves in the year ahead.
This year, we will use the beautiful verses that are said when we wrap ourselves in tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries) in morning prayer as a doorway to explore heartful questions: what do I want to wrap around myself in the coming year? Which relationships? Which habits? Which values and ideals? To what and to whom am I bound?
Each week, we will open up a different theme and explore nourishing texts - Jewish and secular - to help us do this deep work and get ready to meet the New Year.
All are welcome.
4 Thursdays - August 28th, Sept. 4th, 11th, 18th
10:00 - 11:30 am CT online
Taught by Rebecca Minkus Lieberman
Fee: $125
Wrapping Ourselves in What We Value: Spiritual Preparation for the High Holidays
This Elul, we will come together in community for four weeks of study, conversation, and practice to stir our hearts and minds and prepare our souls to meet the Jewish New Year of 5786. Each year, the High Holidays usher us into a time of fresh starts and rebirth, and the Hebrew month of Elul is our time to step back, ask the questions that are sitting on our hearts, examine our lives, our relationships, our work, and reach for practices and habits that will guide us towards our better selves in the year ahead.
This year, we will use the beautiful verses that are said when we wrap ourselves in tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries) in morning prayer as a doorway to explore heartful questions: what do I want to wrap around myself in the coming year? Which relationships? Which habits? Which values and ideals? To what and to whom am I bound?
Each week, we will open up a different theme and explore nourishing texts - Jewish and secular - to help us do this deep work and get ready to meet the New Year.
All are welcome.
4 Thursdays - August 28th, Sept. 4th, 11th, 18th
10:00 - 11:30 am CT online
Taught by Rebecca Minkus Lieberman
Fee: $125
The Gates are Open: A Morning of Sacred Blessings
The ten days that separate Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are especially sacred days. During this precious time, it is said that the gates of heaven are open, and our access to the Divine connection is more available. Let’s use this holy liminal time to come
together and share in a beautiful Sephardic ritual called seudat amenim. In this ritual, we gather in community and we share the blessings we have for the year ahead - for ourselves, for those we love, for those who may be in need of extra love, compassion, or healing. We ask for the blessings we long for, share special foods, and together, we all respond “Amen” to each blessing, offering the blessings support and strength. It is a beautiful and powerful ritual to share together during this holy time.
Space is limited for this event, as we want to keep the group small and intimate.
Led by Rebecca Minkus Lieberman
Rosewood Beach Interpretive Center - 883 Sheridan Road, Highland Park
Cost: $54
Wrapping Ourselves in What We Value: Spiritual Preparation for the High Holidays
This Elul, we will come together in community for four weeks of study, conversation, and practice to stir our hearts and minds and prepare our souls to meet the Jewish New Year of 5786. Each year, the High Holidays usher us into a time of fresh starts and rebirth, and the Hebrew month of Elul is our time to step back, ask the questions that are sitting on our hearts, examine our lives, our relationships, our work, and reach for practices and habits that will guide us towards our better selves in the year ahead.
This year, we will use the beautiful verses that are said when we wrap ourselves in tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries) in morning prayer as a doorway to explore heartful questions: what do I want to wrap around myself in the coming year? Which relationships? Which habits? Which values and ideals? To what and to whom am I bound?
Each week, we will open up a different theme and explore nourishing texts - Jewish and secular - to help us do this deep work and get ready to meet the New Year.
All are welcome.
4 Thursdays - August 28th, Sept. 4th, 11th, 18th
10:00 - 11:30 am CT online
Taught by Rebecca Minkus Lieberman
Fee: $125
Wrapping Ourselves in What We Value: Spiritual Preparation for the High Holidays
This Elul, we will come together in community for four weeks of study, conversation, and practice to stir our hearts and minds and prepare our souls to meet the Jewish New Year of 5786. Each year, the High Holidays usher us into a time of fresh starts and rebirth, and the Hebrew month of Elul is our time to step back, ask the questions that are sitting on our hearts, examine our lives, our relationships, our work, and reach for practices and habits that will guide us towards our better selves in the year ahead.
This year, we will use the beautiful verses that are said when we wrap ourselves in tallit (prayer shawl) and tefillin (phylacteries) in morning prayer as a doorway to explore heartful questions: what do I want to wrap around myself in the coming year? Which relationships? Which habits? Which values and ideals? To what and to whom am I bound?
Each week, we will open up a different theme and explore nourishing texts - Jewish and secular - to help us do this deep work and get ready to meet the New Year.
All are welcome.
4 Thursdays - August 28th, Sept. 4th, 11th, 18th
10:00 - 11:30 am CT online
Taught by Rebecca Minkus Lieberman
Fee: $125
The Contours of Memory
In springtime, as we walk from Passover to Shavuot, our days are marked by moments for remembering and commemorating. Holocaust Memorial Day, Israel’s Independence Day and Memorial Day, Lag BaOmer. As we move forward as a People, we also look back and carry the past with us. How do memories shape our current selves? The form our identities take?
Our personal and collective memories of the past live within us and have the power to give weight and meaning to the ways in which we understand our lives today. In this 3-session class, we will explore these questions and dynamics through shared text study and personal reflection.
Thursdays - 10:00 - 11:30 AM CT
May 8, 22, and 29
$100
Taught by Rebecca Minkus Lieberman
The Contours of Memory
In springtime, as we walk from Passover to Shavuot, our days are marked by moments for remembering and commemorating. Holocaust Memorial Day, Israel’s Independence Day and Memorial Day, Lag BaOmer. As we move forward as a People, we also look back and carry the past with us. How do memories shape our current selves? The form our identities take?
Our personal and collective memories of the past live within us and have the power to give weight and meaning to the ways in which we understand our lives today. In this 3-session class, we will explore these questions and dynamics through shared text study and personal reflection.
Thursdays - 10:00 - 11:30 AM CT
May 8, 22, and 29
$100
Taught by Rebecca Minkus Lieberman
Reaping and Sowing: Holding Each Other on the Way to Sinai - A Day Retreat for Shavuot
The holiday of Shavuot celebrates the giving of the Torah and the harvesting of the first fruits from the field. It is a festival of revelation, connection, redemption, and new beginnings. At the core of the holiday, stands the Book of Ruth - a book about human loss, interconnection, love, and care.
What can the relationships at the heart of this book teach us about chesed (lovingkindness) and teshuvah (reclamation)? In what ways is this story speaking to the power of relationships to redeem and pave a path towards wholeness? What does redemptive relationships have to do with Shavuot and accepting Torah in our lives?
At this special day retreat, we will honor the power of loving relationships and explore teachings and practices that help us think about Torah in our lives in new ways. The day will include shared study, personal reflection, embodied practices, meditative time in the gardens and the Middlefork Savanna, a farm-to-table vegetarian lunch, and time for artistic exploration.
In the spirit of celebrating relationships, we are offering a discount for participants who register for the retreat with a friend.
Led by Rebecca Minkus Lieberman and Deb Wineman
Cost - $175
Sign up with a friend and each pay $160
The Contours of Memory
In springtime, as we walk from Passover to Shavuot, our days are marked by moments for remembering and commemorating. Holocaust Memorial Day, Israel’s Independence Day and Memorial Day, Lag BaOmer. As we move forward as a People, we also look back and carry the past with us. How do memories shape our current selves? The form our identities take?
Our personal and collective memories of the past live within us and have the power to give weight and meaning to the ways in which we understand our lives today. In this 3-session class, we will explore these questions and dynamics through shared text study and personal reflection.
Thursdays - 10:00 - 11:30 AM CT
May 8, 22, and 29
$100
Taught by Rebecca Minkus Lieberman
A Time for Transformation: Pesach, Matzah, and Maror
Passover is a holiday that sits on a threshold and opens up many forms of transformation: from enslaved to free, from constriction to expansion, from muted to speaking, from powerless to empowered. The customs of the holiday and the seder itself are rich with teachings, rituals, and symbols that invite us into this collective story of change and liberation. In this session, we will study some of these teachings and share some ideas that you can bring into your own personal Passover experience.
Taught by Rebecca Minkus Lieberman
Meeting Adar in this Moment: Opening the Doorway to Joy
There are abundant reasons for real despair and grief right now. It has felt so challenging to find openings for joy. But when faced with sorrow, we have to continue to summon the spiritual strength to hope, to love, to smile, and to lift ourselves and each other up. It is a form of spiritual resistance. But we can’t do this alone. Join us for a special session to begin the month of Adar with the study of selected texts and practices that can help us acknowledge the difficulty of this present time while still finding the courage to open the doorway to joy.
Harmonizing Your Inner Tribes: The Book of Exodus as a Route to Resilience
The Exodus is both an inspiring and a cautionary tale -- an apt model through which to explore the self as comprising many different aspects and attributes, subject to challenges from both within and without. In this class, we will delve into four consecutive Torah portions from the Book of Exodus, considering the challenges and breakthroughs of the narrative as an instruction manual on how to cultivate an internal harmonization of self that can withstand the challenges of an uncertain world.
Tuesday evenings - 7:30 - 9 pm CT online
January 28th, February 4th, 11th and 18th
Registration fee: $150
Taught by Dr. David Gottlieb
Harmonizing Your Inner Tribes: The Book of Exodus as a Route to Resilience
The Exodus is both an inspiring and a cautionary tale -- an apt model through which to explore the self as comprising many different aspects and attributes, subject to challenges from both within and without. In this class, we will delve into four consecutive Torah portions from the Book of Exodus, considering the challenges and breakthroughs of the narrative as an instruction manual on how to cultivate an internal harmonization of self that can withstand the challenges of an uncertain world.
Tuesday evenings - 7:30 - 9 pm CT online
January 28th, February 4th, 11th and 18th
Registration fee: $150
Taught by Dr. David Gottlieb
Harmonizing Your Inner Tribes: The Book of Exodus as a Route to Resilience
The Exodus is both an inspiring and a cautionary tale -- an apt model through which to explore the self as comprising many different aspects and attributes, subject to challenges from both within and without. In this class, we will delve into four consecutive Torah portions from the Book of Exodus, considering the challenges and breakthroughs of the narrative as an instruction manual on how to cultivate an internal harmonization of self that can withstand the challenges of an uncertain world.
Tuesday evenings - 7:30 - 9 pm CT online
January 28th, February 4th, 11th and 18th
Registration fee: $150
Taught by Dr. David Gottlieb
Harmonizing Your Inner Tribes: The Book of Exodus as a Route to Resilience
The Exodus is both an inspiring and a cautionary tale -- an apt model through which to explore the self as comprising many different aspects and attributes, subject to challenges from both within and without. In this class, we will delve into four consecutive Torah portions from the Book of Exodus, considering the challenges and breakthroughs of the narrative as an instruction manual on how to cultivate an internal harmonization of self that can withstand the challenges of an uncertain world.
Tuesday evenings - 7:30 - 9 pm CT online
January 28th, February 4th, 11th and 18th
Registration fee: $150
Taught by Dr. David Gottlieb
Event: Courageous Light: Hanukkah Teachings for Seeding Hope
Join Orot for an online learning session to explore Jewish texts and mindfulness practice to prepare for Hanukkah. Hanukkah is a festival that celebrates the power of light and courage during a season of darkness, and in this gathering, we will dive into teachings that will help us move into the celebration of the holiday with greater strength, fortitude, and trust in our own capacity to nurture light - in our lives, communities, and the world.
There is no cost to register.
Trusting in Our Children's Light: A Peaceful Parent Teaching for Hanukkah
Join us for a Peaceful Parent teaching for Hanukkah about how we can trust in our children's independent lights, even in challenging periods.
The Gift of Elul: Finding Our Footprints Home
Admission: $125.00
Location: Zoom
Each year, the Hebrew month of Elul offers us a gift - 4 weeks to step back from our routines and turn inwards to begin the work of cheshbon ha’nefesh - the inner accounting of our souls. This gift is precious and also daunting, and it helps to begin the work with a community of supportive peers. This Elul, we will all be asking new questions about ourselves, our communities, our identities in light of the challenging year we have experienced. The work of the High Holiday season is the work of Teshuva: a chance to return home to what is most essential and core to who we want to be in our lives. In this 4-session class, we will turn to Jewish texts - ancient and modern - and non-Jewish sources of wisdom to help open up these questions of our soul. The classes will interweave study, group discussion, private reflection, and exercises to craft your own rituals to guide you into the new Jewish year of 5785.
All are welcome.