I am genuinely awe-inspired by the overwhelming interest in this program. Even more, I am thrilled to be co-facilitating this year’s cohorts alongside the beloved and brilliant Jewish educator, Dr. Kohenet Harriette Wimms. Together, we will co-create a thick Jewish space in which every single person’s belonging and relationship with Jewish community is desired.

I was moved to co-found Disability Wisdom As Soul Care with Kirva for many reasons but at the end of the day, it all goes back to belonging and truly feeling beloved and at home in community. Unfortunately, Jews with disabilities from many backgrounds and lived experiences have experienced a marked decline in mainstream institutional Judaism’s interest in supporting us and in particular our spiritual growth and sense of connection to Jewish tradition, ritual and practice. I have experienced this first-hand.

I was moved to co-found Disability Wisdom As Soul Care with Kirva for many reasons but at the end of the day, it all goes back to belonging and truly feeling beloved and at home in community. Unfortunately, Jews with disabilities from many backgrounds and lived experiences have experienced a painful decline in mainstream institutional Judaism’s interest in supporting us and in particular our spiritual growth and sense of connection to Jewish tradition, ritual and practice. I have experienced this first-hand.

I do not accept this as an inevitability. I hope Disability Wisdom As Soul Care will play a part in moving our communities and institutions out of the constricted and narrow places in which they find themselves, as we all emerge into wide, alive expanses of future possibilities. As I open and trust in the unfolding of this new round of Disability Wisdom As Soul Care, I am reveling in the opportunity set before me to co-create the kind of loving, rooted, ethically-grounded, spiritually alive and deeply kind Jewish community I know is possible.

If you are interested in learning more about Disability Wisdom as Soul Care, we invite you to visit our website and to subscribe to Kirva’s newsletter to stay in the loop.

Learn more about DWASC

This summer, a piece for Lilith Magazine that I wrote about DWASC was included in a Disability Pride Month literary round up from the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. A direct link to that piece is here: “Disability As Beloved By the Divine”

Read my piece in Lilith

Support me on Ko-fi

As part of that spiritual preparation, I’m delighted to be offering multiple opportunities to learn and practice together, both in-person and virtually.

“Buy me a coffee” on Ko-fi

Join me in DC!

If you are in the DC area or know someone who is, you are warmly invited to join me and my co-teachers, Jill Minneman and Amy Golen for a Jewish mindfulness meditation group co-sponsored by Adas Israel Congregation’s Wellness Center and Or HaLev: Jewish Spirituality and Meditation. Our first meeting of the year is this coming Tuesday, September 1, from 7-8PM EDT. Please register to join us here. We look forward to being together. Following this Elul session, we meet next for a special Sukkot session on September 29, 2026.

Register for Jewish Mindfulness

Virtual offerings

I will be the teacher for the Ground and Center weekday meditation through Or HaLev on September 3 and 8 from 1:15-1:45PM EDT. These sits have been a steady part of my teaching and practice for the past few years and I look forward to holding this space each time I do. Please join us and follow the link below to learn more and register for the Zoom link. Freely offered. All are welcome.

Register for Ground & Center

Enjoy a recent practice I led with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality.

I was the teacher for the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s daily sit on August 20, 2026. I wove together Rabbi Nachman of Breslov’s teaching on Good Points—identifying positive qualities about ourselves and others—with the spiritual orientation of Elul. You can practice with me through the recording which can be accessed here. IJS holds a meditation Monday-Friday from 12:30-1:00PM EDT followed by an optional fifteen minutes of question and response. You can learn more about this and IJS’ other offerings on their website.

Watch the recording

Thank you so much for reading and learning with me. Your support, whether by sharing, subscribing or otherwise means so much and allows me to continue doing this work.

Share Contemplative Torah

Contemplative Torah is entirely supported by readers, without institutional backing, and will always remain so. To support my work, you can become a paid subscriber right here on Substack by following the link below or if a paid subscription isn’t right for you right now, you may make a one-time contribution by buying me a coffee.

Be well,

Lauren

I recently returned from a seven-day silent meditation retreat, a practice I engage in with some frequency. Often when I share with others that I have been on retreat or am planning to go, almost before I can complete my sentence, the response I am met with is often “How can you do that?” or “I could never do that! Isn’t that hard? How can you not talk to people at meals?” This response is illustrative of where we are as a culture. Ours is a culture that rewards distraction, fractures our attention such that an increasing number of us struggle to remain focused on one thing at a time and rewards us for not remaining with the present moment, just as it is. As a lover of long-form content and depth in my connections with others, this is particularly sad to me. We don’t know how—or if—we can sit with ourselves. I think many of us fear what will emerge when we take time for slowness, stillness, and silence. That fear is not misplaced. When all of the distractions are removed, the to-do lists, the ever-present jarring noises of our devices, the need to be somewhere, the stuff that lies under the surface that daily life tends to give us ample opportunities not to be with can come up. Skilled teachers of meditation practice, rooted in trauma-informed practice and other modalities of meeting difficulty with skill and wise presence are an integral part of retreat, helping participants navigate difficulties with ease and abundant compassion. In my experience, when I am able to meet what arises with skill and self-compassion, a sense of release and ease can sometimes emerge. The next time that same content comes up, as it inevitably will because that’s the nature of being a human being in this world, there are tools that are more readily available to me to use to meet it, whether that’s in formal meditation practice or in daily life when practice can have a particularly significant impact. As one of my retreat teachers taught us, sitting retreat is both about our practice and also about how we can come back from it and be even more present and attuned to others. Retreat isn’t for ourselves alone. It’s benefits extend and ripple outward, touching all those we meet. Retreat is a true gift; one I highly recommend.

This, too, is how Elul functions on the Jewish calendar. It is a time of inner work, stock-taking, making amends and doing a personal and communal accounting. This work, I believe, is becoming increasingly complex, as we are each working with layers upon layers of personal and collective memory, grief, regret, trauma, confusion, fear, and profound uncertainty. If we’re honest with ourselves, some of us may feel woefully unprepared to encounter the profound changes that have occurred in the world over the past decade or more. Some of us may experience an upending of our world and how we perceived ourselves in it that is startling or shattering, shocking, or enraging.

Simultaneously, some of us find ourselves in a place of profound recognition. Things were never as open or easeful as many around us imagined and though we knew this in our bones, we couldn’t or didn’t know how to articulate the rawness of our lived experience. We didn’t have space. Or if space emerged, people often didn’t know how to meet difficult truths. When met with a world unwilling or unable to hear and comprehend, we tended to shut down and step away.

My invitation this Elul is to find a way to use this time as a container for your own process. Perhaps this is done with others. It can be extraordinarily helpful to find a trusted individual or a small group of individuals with whom to begin those heartfelt, brave, and often deeply emotional conversations. You may want to spend more time journaling or in nature or engaging in spiritual practice. There are multiple daily opportunities to join others in meditation practice. Two I will mention here are the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and Or HaLev. Many Jewish organizations offer preparatory classes and opportunities for the High Holiday season during Elul. You may also find that taking intentional time to recite Psalm 27 daily, as is the traditional practice from Rosh Chodesh Elul through Shemini Atzeret can be a container to slow down and explore the abundance of human emotion and experience the Psalmist uses to express what words so often struggle to.

For those of us whose workloads increase exponentially this time of year, I first offer my heartfelt gratitude for the ways you steward so many of us through this time, holding all that needs holding, tending all that needs tending with love and care. Every year, it seems that work gets harder. May you find moments, no matter how small, to tend to yourself, ensuring your well is full. May we find moments of slowness and presence this Elul as we prepare to hear the still, small voice within. May that stillness lead us towards greater clarity and wisdom.

Support me directly

Paid subscription billing has been paused to reflect this break. I so look forward to being back in a few months. In the meantime, I hope you all find moments of joy and delight this season.

With warmest wishes,

Rabbi Lauren

This chapter is a multi-layered, complex series of interwoven episodes involving Miriam, Moses and Aaron. This text invites us to ask deep questions about the role of a leader, the way in which challenges to leadership are held or not, and how we might unearth some subversiveness woven like a thread through the Torah’s dominant narrative.

We spoke about wise speech, patriarchy, lost women’s wisdom and the desire to reclaim it, Miriam’s critical role as a prophetess and leader in her own right, and how the Torah seemingly weaves together multiple strands of potentially competing narratives. This textual interweaving opens up possibilities for a multitude of readings and leaves for us to interpret some important ambiguity.

Watch my teaching

Shabbat shalom!

Meditate with me

One of my favorite customs of Shavuot (literally translated as the Feast of Weeks) is the reading of the Book of Ruth. This short Biblical book is at its heart a deeply relational family saga, teaching us profound lessons about the ties that bind us, what it means to be part of a family and a community when the going gets tough and perhaps most profoundly, what it means to bind your lot to others. Too often, this book gets enough time and attention paid to it as it takes to read it liturgically in synagogue. What if it were otherwise?

The reading of Ruth is purposeful. Set during the time of the Shoftim or Judges, when every man did what was pleasing in his own eyes—in other words, the book’s author deliberately places it at a time of grave social collapse. Amidst this backdrop is one very human family, navigating the direct impact of famine, relocation, and unfathomable loss. Naomi, Elimelech her husband and their two sons journey from Bethlehem to the Land of Moab due to a famine. They settle and the two sons marry Moabite women—Orpah and Ruth. This is notable because the Moabites were explicitly excluded in other ancient Israelite texts from joining the people of Israel due to their lack of hospitality when the Israelites journeyed in the wilderness. The Book of Ruth’s author is explicitly asking us, as the readers, to reexamine the logic of such exclusion, challenging it at its root. When Elimelech and his sons die, Naomi, who is understandably in the thick of grief, begs her daughters-in-law to return to their families. What more can she give them? She has no children, no husband, utterly alone and without social access in her context. Orpah does eventually return home. I am so curious about Orpah’s story. Who is she? What compels her to return home? What was her relationship with Ruth like? The narrative proceeds without Orpah after her choice to depart.

Ruth clings to Naomi, telling her in one of the book’s most poetic and memorable verses that wherever Naomi goes, she will go, where Naomi lodges, she will lodge, ETC (Ruth 1:16). She will join Naomi’s people and G-d. Jewish tradition understands much about the psycho-spiritual process of conversion to Judaism from this beautiful text. Indeed, for those who choose Judaism, this is often cited as one of the most cherished verses of the Hebrew Bible, encapsulating the journey taken.

The book is also one that in many respects centers women and their relationships. By doing so, it removes us in many respects from the dominant relational paradigm of not enough-ness, exclusion, fear, and insularity. Ruth invites us to explore the assumptions that undergird how we relate to others. Might there be a better way? How can direct personal encounter and profound acts of loving-kindness and goodness remake us? Bearing in mind that the land of Ruth’s birth is the land of Moab, a place that holds, in the Israelite imagination a great deal of hostility and distrust, the author of the book of Ruth is inviting us through beautiful storytelling to humanize those our wider culture teaches us to cast aside. We remember Ruth as a lover of kindness, a great doer of kindness. Ruth’s acts in the world are done out of that same divine spark and pure soul that lives in each and every one of us, the author seems to be teaching us. Don’t allow the culture’s loud, omnipresent conditioning and noise to distract you from the truest essence of this human being before you.

We are also being taught implicitly that we are each unique individuals, containing multitudes, and as the Mishnah in Sanhedrin 4:5 would later affirm, an entire world unto ourselves. No two of us are alike. We all, ultimately, descend from the same human ancestors.

Eventually, after marrying Naomi’s kinsman, Boaz, Ruth gives birth to a son who the book explicitly names as a descendant of the future King David, who will ultimately be a distant descendant of the Messiah in classical rabbinic understanding.

Put another way, the future messiah, who the tradition understands will ultimately bring about a redeemed world descends from two nations in conflict. That state need not be immutable, permanent, the text argues.

At a time when we are living in an increasingly insular, and fearful world, when the contents of the news cycle, our social media feeds and even our physical, offline lives condition us to believe that this state of being is immutable, permanent, unchanging and that there’s nothing we can do, might we allow Ruth’s message to live within us?

When I find myself, as so often happens in the spin cycle of despair and utter powerlessness, returning to Ruth helps me reorient and gives me just enough spiritual imagination to imagine a better tomorrow. Perhaps this is the most enduring lesson for me this year. Ruth equips us with radical, grounded spiritual imagination, rooted in the rawness and realness of human life and experience.

May we be strong and courageous enough to hold onto our spiritual imaginations as we traverse our own unknown. May we merit to be like Ruth.

Read the commentary

May we never stop yearning for a world of kindness, care, mutuality and interdependence.

Today, this day is chiefly observed by a minor liturgical change in which a section of supplicatory prayers, known as Tachanun is not said.

Customarily, there are some who choose to eat matzah in honor of this day. Spiritually, much has been made of the second chance nature of this day. I find great power and potential in the possibility of a kind of teshuvah which, like teshuvah/return in general may be about repair and closeness. Here, there is an added communal dimension.

There’s a desire to participate in a foundational (perhaps the foundational) communal ritual of the year which indicates a sense of covenant and belonging with the people. This day is also the first of the week of Hod, chesed sh’b’hod, loving-kindness within splendor. The week of hod invites us to widen our attention, to release what isn’t serving, to loosen our grip, even by a percentage point. There are so many times in our lives when we feel we missed a chance to do something important (and there are honestly many times in life when we can’t go back to mend what we missed). When those rare times do arise, may we take hold of the opportunity and do so with as much gentleness towards ourselves as possible.

May this Pesach Sheni be an opportunity for reflection both about second chances and mending what has broken but on an even deeper level, may this day invite honest, hard reflection on the nature of communal inclusion and exclusion. May we hear the cries of those who want to be part of the community and couldn’t at the appointed time. May we and they find a way in and may we all approach one another with acceptance and love.

A Rabbi on Capitol Hill

I also invite you to read my newest article, publish in Lilith Magazine. Read about my visit to Capitol Hill.

Read my article

I am writing this on the 25^th day of the Omer, which is the midway point through this time of counting and accounting. May the second half of the Omer, as we move ever closer to Shavuot be a time of meaning, deepening and growth. To that end, in addition to my own offerings, I am ending this newsletter with a section I’m experimenting with called What I’m reading and listening to in which I’m going to share some personal recommendations I hope will be of interest to others.

In this month of Iyar, the month of counting the Omer, I am pleased to share a wide variety of virtual and in-person offerings! I will begin with multi-session programs and courses.

Multi-Session Programs and Courses

My month of practice for people with disabilities through Or HaLev, Opening to Presence Where Jewish Mindfulness Meets Lived Disability Experience is still open for registration. This offering is open to folks with all levels of meditation experience who identify as living with disability and/or chronic pain. Registration closes this week. All details, including how to register may be found here.

Register for Opening to Presence

Additionally, I am one of the teachers for Or HaLev’s ongoing Ground and Center weekday meditation offering from 1:15PM-1:45PM EDT/10:15-10:45AM PDT on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. I next lead on May 5. To join us, please go here to receive the Zoom link and daily reminders of upcoming sits.

Register for Ground and Center

Disability Wisdom As Soul Care Applications Now Open!

I am delighted to share that my program, Disability Wisdom As Soul Care in partnership with Kirva is now accepting applications for our next round of vaads/practice groups. As DWASC evolves and grows, we are specifically looking for folks interested in learning to facilitate DWASC in their own communities over the next three years. You can read much more about the program on our website and register for our info session on Wednesday, May 6 at 7:00PM. Applications close for DWASC closes on June 15, 2026.

Learn more and apply

Upcoming practice and learning opportunities

There are several virtual and in-person opportunities to learn and practice meditation with me in the coming weeks.

I am leading the weekly Monday night meditation sit with NeySHEV today, Monday, April 27 at 8:00PM EDT/5:00PM PDT. To join us, please go to the NeySHEV website above and sign up for their newsletter to receive the Zoom link.

Learn more about NeySHEV

Learn with me in person!

If you are in the Washington, D.C. area, you are warmly invited to join me on Tuesday nights this May for an hour of Jewish mindfulness practice. We will be meeting on Tuesdays, May 5, 12, 19 and 26 at Adas Israel Congregation from 7-8PM. All are welcome. Please go here to register. Open to all regardless of membership status at Adas. These sits are in collaboration with the Wellness Center at Adas and Or HaLev: Jewish Spirituality and Meditation.

Register

Finally, I’m holding the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) daily sit on May 26 and June 23. Please learn more and register for this offering here.

Register for IJS

What I’m reading and listening to

I am experimenting with sharing some books, podcasts or other pieces I’ve found to be particularly meaningful or impactful on my journey, in hopes that this will be supportive for others also. I am beginning today with one book and one podcast recommendation.

In a culture that prizes short attention spans, I am actively choosing to lengthen mine by reading books of enduring and timely wisdom, as well as listening to long-form podcasts.

I just began reading On Mindful Democracy by Jeremy David Engels at the recommendation of a teacher and colleague. This tiny book is insightful, quite readable and profoundly applicable in our time.

Onto a podcast recommendation! On Being has accompanied me for decades through undergraduate work, graduate work, rabbinical school and the ever-changing nature of what it means to work as a rabbi today. I was profoundly grateful when, in my final year at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I was invited to join a beautiful On Being gathering in the winter of 2018 in the Bay Area. The current season features a beautiful and wise conversation with my teacher, Rav Shai Held. The link to this conversation, On Love and Judaism can be found here.

On Love and Judaism

This is all for now.

May it be a meaningful beginning of spring or autumn wherever you are on this precious planet.

I’ve found it meaningful this week to think about what it means to create structure and container. How might those structures strengthen us and create more spaciousness? When the world becomes too big, too much for us, how might we work with gevurah, with its invitation to create wise boundaries, practice wise discernment and create containers that can hold what needs holding without overwhelm? Much easier said than done, certainly.

A song that has been hugely supportive for me this week as I welcome the intentional energy of gevurah is Carry This All by Alexandra Blakely. May we remember that this is “way too big for you to carry this on your own so you do not carry this all alone.”

Registration is closing soon for Opening To Presence: Where Jewish Mindfulness Meets Lived Disability Experience, a four-session course I am teaching with Or HaLev: Jewish Spirituality and Meditation. We begin on April 23.

Register

This course is an affinity space for people with disabilities, chronic illness and/or pain. More about that is on the registration page linked above. Please share widely with folks in your circles you think might be a good fit and please feel welcomed to join us if you are a person living with a disability, chronic illness or chronic pain.

Please also enjoy this nine-minute video I made introducing the course which includes a guided meditation. Finding What is Supportive

Watch Finding What is Supportive

Support Rabbi Tuchman on Ko-fi

We are nearing the end of Passover, the festival of spring and of our liberation from the narrow places. For too many of us, the themes of the holiday are profoundly at odds with our lived experience this year and in many prior to it. We’re carrying so much heaviness, so much fear and uncertainty. We are neither alone in these feelings nor are we alone in navigating the difficulties that can arise when a joyous celebration meets the raw, real lived realities of our lives.

Many traditions mark major festivals with the coming of spring, including of course Easter. We humans are profoundly interwoven with creation, with the seasons and cycles. We yearn for new growth and possibility as winter transitions to spring. And we know that life rarely works that way. The gap between lived experience and our deepest desires is vast and sometimes it feels unbridgeable.

It is so important at moments when we find ourselves in that liminal place to take the time to honor that this is what is here. This is so challenging, and yet, as we honor the truth of our inner experience, we give ourselves more space to continue being in the world and showing up as best we can, continuing to hope and work for a world we do not yet inhabit.

Read more

Whether you’re observing Passover, Easter, something else or the blooming of spring, may you have a sweet, joyous holiday and a rejuvenating spring.

Finally, registration is open for my course, Opening to Presence: Where Jewish Mindfulness Meets Lived Disability Experience. The course runs four Thursdays, April 23-May 14 from 12:00PM-1:15PM EDT. More information and registration are found Here.

Wishing you all well.

With care,

Lauren

Support my work on Ko-Fi

I’ve been thinking a lot about liberation, freedom, narrowness, the gap between our aspirations and our lived experience and how we can work with all of this.

I hope this teaching will be supportive. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, I welcome you to join us to access this content and so much more. Most importantly, your support, in all of the ways it manifests means so much and gives me the strength to keep doing this work at this incredibly difficult time. Thank you so much. I cannot find the words to express my gratitude enough.

Read more

Support Rabbi Tuchman on Ko-Fi

You can watch the recording of the class on YouTube below. Thanks for learning with me!

Watch the recording

I am so grateful to be offering a new four-session Jewish Mindfulness course…

through Or HaLev called Opening To Presence: Where Jewish Mindfulness Meets Lived Disability Experience. Taught over four Thursdays in the month of Iyar (the only full month of the Jewish year when the omer is counted each night), we will co-create a rich, intentional container of practice that is an affinity space for practitioners with disabilities. I have noticed, again and again, as have many others unfortunately, that too many mindfulness spaces unintentionally exclude practitioners with disabilities or make us feel a sense of profound non-belonging, which undermines the foundation upon which practice rests.

If you or someone you know is interested in Jewish mindfulness practice and resonates with a space like this, you are warmly welcome to join us. Registration is live!

The course dates and times are as follows:

Thursdays April 23, 30, May 7 and 14 from 12:00PM-1:15PM EDT, 9:00AM-10:15PM PDT, 17:00-18:15 GMT, 19:00-20:15 IST.

Here is a bit of the course description:

“This course, intentionally designed by and for practitioners with disabilities, offers a space to explore the intersection of Jewish mindfulness practice and lived disability experience. Out of an acknowledgement that too often meditation spaces have been inaccessible to practitioners with disabilities, we will together co-create a field of practice and learning in which all parts of ourselves are warmly welcomed as they are. Through cultivation practice we will plant seeds of supportive mind states and qualities such as pleasantness and compassion.

Living in times as challenging as these it is even more important that we resource ourselves to meet our experiences with gentleness. Too many people with disabilities have been conditioned to believe that we are separate, unlovable and that who we are is fundamentally wrong. Through practice, we open ourselves slowly and gradually to the deepest knowing that non-separation applies to us, too. The Jewish tradition teaches that every human being is created in the Image of the Divine. There are no exceptions to this. We, too, are included. Jewish mindfulness practice can help us have a felt-sense of our belovedness and help us remember who we truly are.”

Here again is the link to register: Opening to Presence: Where Jewish Mindfulness Meets Lived Disability Experience

Register for Opening to Presence

I look forward to practicing with you!

It is a place for the Shechinah—Divine Presence—to dwell. “And make for me a sanctuary so that I can dwell amongst you” (Shmot/Exodus 25:8). The extensive precision and preparation aren’t accidental. They are essential.

I am honored to once again offer Weekly Wisdom on the parsha through a Jewish mindfulness perspective.

Watch here

You can subscribe to receive these offerings from some truly magnificent Jewish mindfulness teachers each week on Or HaLev’s website. Shabbat shalom!

I am pleased to share some upcoming opportunities to learn with me, both virtually and in person in the coming months.

A Disability Wisdom As Soul Care Webinar: Teachings for JDAIM (Jewish Disability Awareness and Inclusion Month) and Every Day

When: Thursday, Feb 19, 2026, 5:00PM-6:15PM EST/2:00PM-3:15PM PST

Where: Zoom register here!

What: Led by Rabbi Lauren Tuchman, this gathering will offer teachings and practices from Kirva’s Disability Wisdom as Soul Care program, which cultivates vibrant Jewish learning communities led by and for Jews with disabilities. Rooted in the belief that disability and chronic illness bring essential wisdom to Jewish tradition and learning spaces, we’ll explore Jewish spiritual tools from Mussar (applied Jewish ethics) and Chassidut (applied Jewish mysticism), and how they can support connection, healing, and nourishment.

This gathering is offered at no cost and is open to all. Whether you are a person with disabilities seeking spiritual resourcing, are curious about the program, or want to better support those with disabilities in your local Jewish community, we hope you’ll join us!

Sign up

Feel free to share this offering with others who may appreciate it.

Ground and Center: Weekday Meditations with Or HaLev

When: Thursday, Feb 19, 2026, 1:15-1:45PM EST/10:15-10:45AM PST

Where: Zoom please register here to receive the Zoom link and reminders of daily sits.

What: I will be leading Ground and Center next on Thursday, Feb 19, a half hour of Jewish learning and mindfulness practice. It’s a beautiful community of practitioners and I feel so grateful and honored to be one of the teachers.

Sign up

Another opportunity to practice with me is coming up on Monday, Feb 23 at 8:00PM EST/5:00PM PST through NeySHEV, a Jewish meditation community based in Toronto and meeting virtually.

NeySHEV’s Monday evening sit

When: Monday, Feb 23, 2026, 8:00PM-8:30PM EST

Where: Zoom please register via the NeySHEV website to receive their weekly newsletter containing the Zoom link to join us.

What: a half hour of Jewish mindfulness practice rooted in the weekly parsha. NeySHEV is a precious space of practice.

Sign up

Practicing in person!

If you are local to the Washington, DC area or know anyone who is, you are warmly welcome to join me for an hour of practice next week!

Or HaLev DC sitting group, in collaboration with the Wellness Center at Adas Israel Congregation.

When: Tuesday, Feb 24, 2026, 7:00PM EST (In person only)

Where: Adas Israel Congregation. Please register here. If you know anyone in the DC area who would be interested in joining us, you are warmly encouraged to share this offering.

What: Please join our burgeoning Or HaLev sitting group in DC for an hour of chanting, silent practice and teaching most Tuesday nights this winter and spring from 7-8PM. We begin and end with a chant, offer about 10-15 minutes of teaching related to where we find ourselves in Jewish spiritual time and allow for a spacious, rich period of silent practice. These sits are held by Rabbi Lauren Tuchman, Jill Minneman and Amy Golen. We are delighted to be offering a new season of sitting. All levels of experience with meditation practice are warmly welcomed. Come to every session or drop in as your schedule allows. We look forward to practicing with you.

Sign up

Save the date!

Opening to Presence: Where Jewish Mindfulness Meets Lived Disability Experience

I am thrilled to be offering a four-session course through Or HaLev which is an affinity practice space for people living with disability and/or chronic illness. More information is below.

This course, intentionally designed by and for practitioners with disabilities, offers a space to explore the intersection of Jewish mindfulness practice and lived disability experience. Out of an acknowledgement that too often practice spaces have been inaccessible to practitioners with disabilities, we will together co-create a field of practice and learning in which all parts of ourselves are warmly welcomed as they are. We need not choose between a richly Jewish practice and honoring the wisdom of our lived experience in all of its multifaceted truth.

When: Thursdays April 23rd through May 14, 12:00-1:15PM ET

Where: Zoom

Get notified when registration opens

I hope you have a wonderful week. Please feel free to share this newsletter with your friends, family and networks.

Donate on Ko-fi

Wishing you well,

Rabbi Lauren Tuchman

Donate on Ko-fi

Read more

This song contains what has become a famous verse in many communities. One possible way to translate it is “my strength and the song of the divine, together they will be for me my salvation/redemption.”

In this short video recorded as part of Weekly Wisdom, a series on the weekly parsha from Or HaLev: Jewish Spirituality and Meditation I explore this verse, inviting us to take it into our lives.

Watch my teaching

You can subscribe to receive weekly wisdom via email through Or HaLev’s website. You can watch my video at the link above and I encourage you to subscribe to Or HaLev to learn from some truly fantastic Jewish mindfulness and meditation teachers. Shabbat shalom!

Donate on Ko-fi