Attending the Teshuva Workshop profoundly changed my experience of the High Holidays this year. Instead of squeezing all my reflection into 10 days, at the end having some vague sense of my path for the coming year, I had time, support and also tools to reflect on my year and am going forward into 5772 with a written spiritual action plan. I know what I intend to do, and, most importantly, why I intend to do it! Thank you so much!
-Paula F., Therapist
Rabbi Jaffe’s Teshuva workshop is wonderful. It’s filled with exercises for both reflection and planning and is a great way to wrap up the past year and plan for the coming year. One highlight for me is writing my own vidui – which I then use during Yom Kippur services. Honestly, I do more in those two short evenings of the workshop than I do over the whole year. Whether or not you do anything else for your spiritual growth this year, do this workshop!
-Deb S., Technical Writer
I am the director of a special needs school in Lexington, MA and am starting my 38th year at the school. My daughter told me about the work she had done with Rabbi Jaffe when she was in the JOIN for Justice organizing fellowship and coupled with my curiosity about Mussar I went with her to last year’s workshops. In that seemingly short time I was able to focus on a recurring difficulty between my-self and my bride of 40 years. I had in those years gone at it in any number of ways and never made a dent in it that lasted at best a few weeks and at worst a few minutes. Something about the focus and approach of 1) Rabbi Jaffe and his openness about the role this has played in his life, and 2) the tools of Mussar itself gave me the first real leg up I have gotten in all these attempts and times. It enabled me to take the work of teshuva that followed during the holy days and create it into a vehicle that enabled a hitherto unchanging situation and set of reactions to change. In closing I can say if it is Hashem’s will I will be back again to see what is next. A sheynem dank to Rabbi Jaffe and the work he is doing.
-Alan S., Head of School