How can Jewish professionals cultivate the spiritual strength needed to lead with clarity, compassion, and courage?
In this self-paced course, Rabbi Joshua Boettiger and Cyd Weissman offer mussar teachings, writing prompts, and mindfulness practices designed to support leaders in Jewish organizations as they work toward their goals with renewed purpose.
Drawing on interviews with dozens of Jewish professionals, Boettiger and Weissman explore common challenges such as balancing care for self and others, navigating difficult conversations, and managing complex power dynamics.
Through five asynchronous sessions, participants will engage with three essential middot—seder (order), ometz lev (courage), and anavah (humility)—to better navigate the complexities of organizational life. The course includes stories, reflective writing prompts, and mindfulness tools to help you integrate these qualities into your daily work.
Ultimately, you’ll create your own ner tamid—a personal phrase or guiding light in mussar practice—that you can draw upon even in the most challenging encounters.
The journey begins with this question:
What is bringing you to the table? What is your current need or question?
Course features:
- Five 20-minute teaching videos exploring three key middot
- Written resources for deeper learning
- Creative writing prompts for reflection, meaning-making, and self-expression
Upon registration, you’ll receive unlimited access to all materials, allowing you to move through the course at your own pace and return to the teachings whenever you wish.
Cyd Weissman, a leading Jewish educator and designer, promotes new models of Jewish education and engagement that foster leaners’ social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. She has worked in numerous Jewish organizations including, Hebrew Union College, The Jewish Education Project, Reconstructing Judaism, and Atra, the Center for Jewish Innovation. Cyd teaches entrepreneurship and mentors innovators in the field. She currently leads a Jewish Writers’ Circle, a project sponsored by Rituawell.
Rabbi Joshua Boettiger is Jewish Chaplain and Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. He is the current Rosh Yeshiva for the Center for Contemporary Mussar and for the last decade, directed the Mussar program at Temple Emek Shalom in Ashland, Oregon. Joshua also teaches Jewish Meditation and co-leads silent retreats. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Pacific University and his poetry has appeared in the Missouri Review, the Southern Review, B O D Y, and elsewhere.
