Reconstructing Judaism's Reset 2019 will be providing year-long support for DJJ staff and our comrades at Avodah and JOIN for Justice. Reset aims to bolster the resilience of social justice leaders and their organizations, so that we can better pursue our work in a spirit and environment of balance, compassion, optimism, sustainability and energy.  

This year, Reset will be providing DJJ and T'chiyah staff the following:  

• Resources and one-on-one spiritual coaching
• Cross-organizational learning and relationship building on resilience practices, facing internal and external challenges to resilience
• Organizational consulting to transform organizational culture to be more resilient, embodied, and aligned with our visions for a sustainable and just world

This is the second iteration of a program originally offered to individuals across the country. The benefits of staff participation in this new program will emanate systematically throughout our work. 

If this resonates and you'd like to glean some learnings immediately, check out the resources Reset offers:

Your Well-Being Toolkit: Join the 5-3-1 practice, learn about neuroplasticity, and discover your emotional style.

Changing Culture: 5 Principles for Interdependent Leadership: What does genuine collaboration look like, and what are the tools needed to develop changing culture in the workplace?

Trauma, Healing and Resilience Reading List: Just a few of our favorite trauma and healing books, podcasts, and websites.

Check out the amazing coordinators of Reset: 

Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg, Project Director

Rabbi Rosenberg is a Reconstructionist rabbi born, raised, and based in Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs. She became a rabbi in order to learn our people’s diverse and nuanced histories, and create spaces, ritual, and organizing that helps transform our relationship to past, present and future.  Currently, she is honored to be piloting the Trauma-Informed Rabbinic Training Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Jessica has served and learned from: the visionary young people at Keshet’s LGBTQIA Teen Shabbatonim; the congregation of Kehilat HaNahar; the rabbis and members of Jewish Voice for Peace in Philadelphia and nationwide; the Congregation at Graterford Prison; organizers at Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice; and her home congregation of Kol Tzedek in West Philadelphia. Check out  Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg on Hashivenu.  

Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg, Spiritual Coach

Rabbi Weinberg served as a congregational rabbi for seventeen years.  She has also worked in the fields of Jewish community relations, Jewish education and Hillel. She has published widely on such topics as feminism, spiritual direction, parenting, social justice and mindfulness from a Jewish perspective, including in her books God Loves the Stranger: Stories Poems and Prayers and Surprisingly Happy: An Atypical Religious Memoir, and has contributed commentaries to Kol HaNeshama, the Reconstructionist prayer book.  Rabbi Weinberg has taught mindfulness meditation and yoga to rabbis, Jewish professionals and lay people in the context of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She serves as a spiritual director to a variety of Jewish clergy including students and faculty at HUC-JIR in New York.  She is creator and co-leader of the Jewish Mindfulness Teacher Training Program. She is married to Maynard Seider and they have three married children and six grandchildren.  

Claudia Horwitz, Organizational Coach

Claudia has been a leader in national efforts to integrate the power of spiritual practice and the work of social justice. In 1995 she founded stone circles, an organization that worked to sustain activists and the work for justice through spiritual practice. The organization also created The Stone House on 70 acres in North Carolina that welcomed over 8,000 people of all traditions for training, retreat and fellowship.  She is the author of The Spiritual Activist: Practices to Transform Your Life, Your Work and Your World (Penguin Compass 2002) Claudia has a master’s degree in Public Policy and is trained as a Kripalu yoga teacher.  Based (mostly) on the North Carolina coast, Claudia helps institutions, organizations and individuals integrate a results-focused approach with thoughtful process, racial justice and the sacred.  She’s working on a book of essays about collective liberation.