Workshops by Yitzhak Buxbaum

Storytelling and Spirituality

In this workshop we will learn how to deepen our spiritual relation to story telling and listening. We will learn skills in spiritual storytelling: how to tell a story to reveal its divine light, how to hear its divine hints, how to meditate on a tale to extract its practical religious lessons, how stories can be used as prayers, and, even, how they can save.

Much of this workshop will be about storytelling, but there will also be storytelling. We will hear, tell, study, analyze, discuss and enjoy stories, and discover how storytelling can enliven our religious sensibilities. Participants will be introduced to a new type of Jewish religious activity-- spiritual storytelling.

This workshop will be based on Yitzhak Buxbaum's book, Storytelling and Spirituality in Judaism, and on his extensive experience as a maggid, a spiritual storyteller.

Real Davvening : Jewish Prayer as a Spiritual Practice and Form of Meditation

Most teaching on Jewish prayer seeks to familiarize people with the structure of the prayer service and synagogue choreography, or to explain the meaning of the various prayers or the theology of prayer, why we pray and so on. This workshop aims to teach you how to pray so that davvening works as a spiritual practice, so that it moves you spiritually. The goal is for you to achieve during prayer an elevated state of mind so that you actually taste and experience the nearness of God. That is what is meant by real -- not rote -- davvening.

Prayer is a form of meditation and to benefit from any meditation you have to learn and apply the proper methods. Only by knowing how to pray can you really davven and progress spiritually by davvening. In this workshop beginning and experienced davveners, men and women will learn traditional hasidic meditation techniques for prayer that will infuse new life and vitality into their davvening. This workshop is based on Yitzhak Buxbaum's booklet: Real Davvening: Jewish Prayer as a Spiritual Practice and a Form of Meditation for Beginning and Experienced Davveners.