Go Deeper 5787:
The Living Wisdom of Jewish Mysticism
A Yearlong Cohort Journey
Journey into the hidden, visionary, and embodied world of Jewish mysticism by learning its fascinating history, core concepts, and transformational practices. Together, we’ll bring ancient mystical teachings into intimate conversation with our lives today through study, meditation, chant, and immersive retreat. The journey unfolds through five offerings — two experiential practice modules, two in-depth learning modules, and an immersive retreat with renowned Zohar scholar Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed – you are welcome to register for one offering and we encourage you to join the full experience!
This journey is an invitation to deepen our relationship with Jewish mystical wisdom as well as with one another. We’ll cultivate community throughout the year through small table groups and chevruta (study partners), creating ongoing opportunities to learn, reflect, and grow together. All sessions will take place in person, with recordings available for anyone who misses a class.
Program Structure
Module 1: Turning Within – Beginning the Mystical Journey (3 weeks)
Module 2: The Mystical Map – Cosmology & Core Concepts (6 weeks)
Special Weeklong Retreat with Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed: Entering the Zohar – A 5-Day Immersive Encounter with the Magic and Mystery of Kabbalah
Module 3: Living Mysticism – Hasidism & Inner Transformation (6 weeks)
Module 4: Coming Home – Jewish Mysticism in Our Daily Lives (3 weeks)
- Format: 6 classes + 1 special gathering, such as a shabbat gathering, mini retreat, or holiday observance.
- Faculty: Each module is led by a core teacher, with 2 guest teachers.
Attendance: All sessions will take place in person. Recordings will be available for anyone who misses a class.
- Content: Classes are open and welcoming, blending scholarship and spiritual depth for both new and experienced learners.
Module Schedule & Faculty
Module 1: Turning Within and Entering the Mystery
Before taking a deep dive into the wild world of Jewish Mysticism, we will begin by exploring our own inner landscape: our relationship to Mystery, our spiritual questions and longings, and where we find ourselves on our mystical journeys.
Together, we will create a safe and open space to bring what moves us and what constrains us, and to listen for the wisdom of our own hearts as we grow our relationship with one another, with the teachings, and with the Mystery itself.
This is the first of our experiential practice modules. We begin with meditation as a foundation for the mystical practices we will encounter along the way, and as an ongoing practice to support integration, embodiment, and a deeper way of being in the world.
3 Classes (Tuesdays, Nov 3, 10, 17 from 6:45-8:30 pm) and a Daylong Retreat (Sunday, Nov 8, from 10am-5pm) with Core Faculty Laura Goldman and Guest Teachers Adam Moskowitz and Daniella Salzman
Pricing (sliding scale):
- Members: $180 / $210 / $240
- Non-Members: $220 / $250 / $280
- Members: $80 / $100 / $120
- Non-members: $110 / $130 / $150
No one turned away for lack of funds, please contact Sam to make arrangements at sam@chochmat.org.
Module 2: The Mystical Map – Cosmology & Core Concepts
We’ll travel the extraordinary map Jewish mystics have drawn of the inner and outer worlds. Together, we’ll trace the roots and branches of Jewish mysticism and encounter its radical ways of imagining God, Torah, creation, language, and the Divine Feminine. We’ll explore ideas such as non-dualism, Shekhinah, and the mystical meaning of mitzvot, discovering how these teachings invite us to see reality and our place within it with new eyes.
This is the first of our in-depth learning modules. Through close study, conversation, and experiential practice, we’ll encounter the core concepts of Jewish mysticism as living wisdom that can shape our lives.
6 Classes (Tuesdays Dec 1, 8, 15, Jan 5, 12, 19 from 6:45-8:30 pm) with Core Faculty Dr. R. Ariel Mayse and Guest Teachers, including R. Jericho Vincent
Special Weeklong Retreat with Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed
Entering the Zohar – An Immersive Encounter with the Magic and Mystery of Kabbalah
This is a rare opportunity to enter the luminous world of the Zohar with one of today’s most gifted teachers of Jewish mystical wisdom. Together we’ll dive into the text of this foundational work so we can experience first-hand its poetic, multi-layered magic. This retreat is limited to 40 participants, please register early.
5-Day Immersive (February 7-11 from 2-7 pm, includes dinner each day) with Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed and Friends
Module 3: Living Mysticism – Hasidism & Inner Transformation
What is our practice at Chochmat HaLev and where did it come from? We’ll follow the unfolding of Hasidism – a radical populist mystical revivalist movement – from its beginnings in 18th-century Eastern Europe through its modern renaissance into the emergence of Neo-Hasidism and Jewish Renewal. Along the way, we’ll explore the essential mystical teachings embedded within the journey on individuality, community, integrity, spiritual awakening, and the possibility of transforming even the ordinary moments of life into encounters with the sacred.
This is the second of our in-depth learning modules. Through the voices of Hasidic masters, modern Jewish mystics, and poets such as Zelda, we’ll ask what it means not only to learn mystical wisdom, but how these teachings might meet us in our own times, struggles, relationships, and spiritual lives.
6 Classes (March 2, 9, 16, 30, April 6, 13 from 6:45-8:30 pm) with Core Faculty Dr. R. Ariel Mayse and Friends, including R. Zvika Krieger
Module 4: Coming Home – Jewish Mysticism in Our Daily Lives
After journeying through the inner landscape, exploring the mystical map, entering the world of the Zohar, and discovering the transformative teachings of Hasidism, we’ll turn toward the question: How do we bring what we’ve encountered home? Together, we’ll deepen our experience of Jewish mystical wisdom as a lived practice in our bodies, relationships, communities, work, prayer, and everyday encounters with the world.
This is the second of our experiential practice modules. Through meditation, chanting, movement, reflection, and shared exploration, we’ll create space to integrate the year’s learning and discover what wants to take root in our own lives. Rather than an ending, this module is an opportunity to ask how we might continue to deepen together in community and personal practice in the year to come.
3 Classes (Tuesdays May 11, 18, 25 from 7-8:30 pm) and a Daylong Retreat (Sunday, May 16, from 10 am-4 pm) with Core Faculty R. Dorothy Richman
Our Teachers
Laura Goldman is a Spiritual Director, teacher of Jewish Meditation and Mussar, and long-time leader of contemplative worship and practice at Chochmat HaLev. She is particularly interested in, and inspired by the intersections and overlaps in different wisdom traditions. She divides her time between Berkeley and Mendocino.
Adam Moskowitz helps individuals, groups, organizations, schools, and companies grow and transform through mindfulness and embodiment-based practices. Words that illustrate his north star are beingness, presence, freedom, and love. For Adam’s full bio visit: https://www.onemindful.com/about
Daniella Salzman is a longtime member of Chochmat HaLev and is deeply committed to revelation and revolution. Having trained as a dance expressive arts therapist, meditation and mindfulness teacher, and community organizer, she is inspired by leaders who dedicate their lives to transforming both our inner and outer worlds towards a lasting and integrated peace.
Ariel Evan Mayse joined the faculty of Stanford University in 2017 as an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies, after previously serving as the Director of Jewish Studies and Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts, and a research fellow at the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Michigan. Mayse holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from Harvard University and rabbinic ordination from Beit Midrash Har’el in Israel. Mayse’s research and teaching interests include: Hasidism, Kabbalah, and Jewish mysticism; comparative religious ethics and theology; ecology and the environmental humanities; medieval Jewish thought; and the philosophy of Jewish law.
Rav Jericho Vincent is the founding rabbi of Temple of the Stranger, a growing Ivri community in Brooklyn. Jericho teaches the Ivri Way. Rooted in the love of Goddess and the wisdom of our ancestor Miriam, the Ivri Way is a mystical, embodied source of ancient Jewish wisdom and practice for healing, connection, justice, and joy. Raised in a rabbinic ultra-Orthodox family, Rav Jericho is a first-generation college graduate. They hold a Master’s in Public Policy from Harvard University, where they were a Pforzheimer Fellow and received rabbinic ordination from the Aleph Ordination Program in the lineage of Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.
Dr. Melila Hellner-Eshed is a teacher of Jewish spirituality and one of the world’s leading authorities on Jewish mysticism and the Zohar. She has been a professor in the Department of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for over two decades. She is a Research Fellow of the Kogod Research Center at Shalom Hartman Institute and serves on the faculty of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality. Her publications include A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar; Seekers of the Face: From the Secrets of the Idra Rabba in the Zohar; and On the Path of the Tree of Life. She is active in Sulha, a reconciliation project that brings together Israelis and Palestinians.
Rabbi Zvika Krieger is the Spiritual Leader of Chochmat HaLev, a progressive spiritual community in Berkeley, CA for embodied prayer, heart-centered connections, and mystical experiences. He is a subversive ritualist and radical traditionalist who is passionate about harnessing ancient wisdom to create modern meaning, fostering mindfulness and authentic connection amidst digital distraction, and bridging the sacred and profane. He has served in board and leadership positions for Sukkat Shalom/Milk+Honey camp at Burning Man, Jewish Studio Project, DC Minyan, Temple of the Stranger, and other organizations dedicated to nourishing the mind, body, and soul.
Dorothy Richman serves as the rabbi of Makor Or: Jewish Meditation Center and is a founding faculty member of the Romemu Yeshiva. Her work engages the spiritual practices of Torah study, prayer, meditation, music, and justice. She has enjoyed a close relationship with Chochmat HaLev over many years, providing deep insights into traditional Jewish practices.
Daniel Matt is a scholar and teacher of Kabbalah. In 2016, he completed an 18-year project of translating the Zohar, the masterpiece of Kabbalah. His nine-volume annotated work — The Zohar: Pritzker Edition (published by Stanford University Press) — has been hailed as “a monumental contribution to the history of Jewish thought.” Daniel received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and for twenty years served as professor at the Center for Jewish Studies, within the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He has also taught at Stanford and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Tuition
Per Module (sliding scale):
- Members: $220 / $250 / $280
- Non-Members: $260 / $290 / $320
No one turned away for lack of funds, please contact Sam to make arrangements at sam@chochmat.org.
