Rabbi Jill’s Latest Blog Posts
Connecting with Breath and Spirit
Every living being breathes. From our first breath to our last, we are given this unasked-for gift. Our breath arrives for us each moment like a miracle. And then our bodies answer, with our exhale out into the universe – letting go, releasing a bit of who we are to the All. It is the …
Blessing Practice
As we begin to turn toward the season of forgiveness, for ourselves and others, there are several practices, we can learn that help soften our souls. One beautiful (and effective) practice that helps us cultivate compassion in and for ourselves and for others is called Blessing Practice (or Lovingkindness Practice). My teacher Sylvia Boorstein teaches …
Life lessons from the saddest day of the Jewish year
On Tisha B’Av – the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av (July 16, 2013) we commemorate and mourn the destruction of the 1st and 2nd Temples in Jerusalem. For modern Jews, how might we make sense of this? A profound teaching may be uncovered from this little-known day: the fall of the Temple …
Gifts everywhere
“Awe enables us to see in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple, to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.” Abraham Joshua Heschel Anything that stops us in our tracks and helps us experience …
Mary Oliver on Awe
Instructions for life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. Mary Oliver (from her poem “Sometimes”) This photo was taken on a walk around our neighborhood in Mar Vista (Los Angeles) – You can just be walking, and come upon such beauty! Click on the photo to really see how amazing this flower is.
An Invitation to Be Present: Lunchtime Thursday at Noon in the Big City of Los Angeles (june 13)
Moses said it. The first human being, Adam, said it. Jacob said it too. What is it that they all said? I am Present. Hineni (in Hebrew) I am fully here. With my whole self. I’m not distracted, thinking of everything else I need to do. Not worrying about the past, or what may happen …
The Breath
Our class yesterday, entitled “Connecting with Breath and Spirit” was all about how to begin or continue a mindfulness practice . We looked at a few verses from the very beginning of Genesis that reflect how core breathing is to all life. We read that “Adonai/The Mystery/Source of All formed the human being of the …
