About the Cohort
Join Atra and Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) for a four month cohort-based experience, designed to help you transform your community’s conversation about Jewish mindfulness and spiritual resilience.
In this Center for Applied Torah Cohort, IJS’s Rabbi Marc Margolius and Atra’s Hillary Gardenswartz will guide us in exploring how nurturing a Jewish mindfulness practice can support your leadership in an ongoing manner, helping us integrate “micro Shabbatot” throughout our daily life in order to cultivate curiosity and spiritual resilience – greater capacity to stay present and centered even in the midst of your large and small challenges.
Through text study of classic texts and ongoing practice, we will explore the spiritual qualities comprising “Shabbat consciousness” which can help us become less activated and reactive, and better able to respond wisely to our challenges.
- Content sessions: Virtual sessions exploring how a Jewish mindfulness practice can strengthen your leadership, curiosity, and spiritual resilience.
- Community of Action and Practice (CoAP): After each content session, you’ll meet in a small group of 7–8 rabbis led by a trained peer facilitator. Together, you’ll reflect on what you’re learning, share challenges, and support one another in putting new ideas into practice.
- Lead one community experiment: Over the course of the program, you’ll design and try out one new practice in your community, whether a teaching or ritual moment, a new way of opening meetings, or another approach that draws on your learning.
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Attend all content sessions and monthly Community of Action and Practice (CoAP) meetings
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Participate in the opening session and closing siyyum
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Apply your learning through leading a community experiment using the frameworks explored in your CoAP
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Engage fully and collaborate across differences within a cohort
- Opening Session: December 3, 2026
- Content Sessions: December 17, 2026, January 21, 2027, February 11, 2027, March 4, 2027
- Closing Siyyum: April 1, 2027
- CoAP Meetings: Typically held during the week following each content session. You will sign up for a time that works for your schedule at the start of the program.