Tehom: Foundations of Jewish Meditation
A six-week systematic introduction to Jewish meditation—what it is, where it comes from, and how it relates to Buddhist and secular mindfulness practice.
Six Tuesdays · 7:00–8:15 PM ET / 4:00–5:15 PM PT · November 17–December 22, 2026 · Zoom · sliding scale, $180–360
- You've done some meditation retreats or classes—Buddhist, Jewish, or otherwise—and you want to understand what's Jewish, or what could be Jewish, about your meditation practice.
- You're looking for a community to learn and practice with, and support with the challenges that arise both within the practice and around sustaining the practice.
- You already have a meditation practice and wish to deepen it and help it feel more connected to your Jewish spirituality; or, you've yearned to have a consistent daily meditation practice but have struggled to do so. You want to ground more deeply in a few core techniques and approaches.
- You have any level of exposure to Hebrew, meditation, or Judaism—this is an all-levels course with core ideas translated, but will be especially helpful for practitioners who are somewhere between beginner and intermediate in their practice and understanding of Jewish meditation.
Over six weeks, we move through the foundations in sequence. Weeks 4–6 turn to the key Kabbalistic and Hasidic ideas beneath the practice.
What Jewish meditation is
The landscape of practices, and how the tradition understands attention and its objects. We focus on foundational embodied practices of awareness.
The body and the breath
How Buddhism and Judaism understand embodiment, in conversation with contemporary work on interoception, perception, and somatic psychology. We begin to focus on how to orient to the body and emotions in practice.
Text as contemplative practice
Engaging text in a heart-first way, as an object of contemplation intended to feed practice and life; unlearning the model of "devour as much information as quickly as possible." We track our sensations, responses, curiosities, and challenges, and observe how text and ideas can feed practice beyond this course.
Divinity and devekut
Non-dual perspectives on the Divine in Judaism, how to practice devekut (cleaving to the Divine) and how devekut can infuse formal and informal practice.
Chesed
The foundation of lovingkindness in our Jewish contemplative tradition and its relation to metta (in Buddhism); introduction to belovedness and blessing practice.
Middot and integration
Practice as woven into a larger ethics and way of being in relationship; contemplating particular middot; carrying practice off the cushion into ordinary Jewish life.
You leave with:
- Discernment: the ability to be with bodily sensations rather than to believe the story in every experience; the ability to look at old patterns and reactions with fresh awareness.
- Fluency in knowing and feeling what Jewish meditation is—its ideas, lineages, and practices.
- Devekut as foundational to Jewish mindfulness: the skills to return to awareness of divinity in everyday experience on and off the cushion.
- Integration: understanding the framework of Jewish contemplative practice as a way of life; carrying chesed (lovingkindness) & middot (character trait) practice into everyday life.
- A community of practice: a learning and practice community that sustains and can kick off a long-term consistent practice.
Each Tuesday runs 75 minutes, where we begin with a sit, a teaching that frames the week's theme, a piece of text we sit with together, a guided practice, and spacious time to reflect on the guided practice as well as how our own practices at home are going.
Between sessions, there's an option to be paired with a chevruta (learning partner) to go deeper with the texts and have accountability around a regular formal practice. I'm available for questions between sessions, and for a longer individual deep-dive, participants can schedule a meditation coaching call at a 20% discount.
"Jes holds a steady and compassionate presence as a facilitator that makes whatever I'm going through—whether physical discomfort or difficult mental patterns—feel more workable. With their grounded and wise guidance, transformation feels possible and gentle."Kohenet Riv S, Cultural Organizer
"The retreat awakened parts of me that needed tending to and has strengthened my connection to my self in a beautiful way. The retreat was the most spiritual experience I have ever had and showed me that Hashem is everywhere if we open our eyes to seeing the divine in daily life."Participant, IJS Young Adult Retreat, 2026
"I have learned to simultaneously thank my mind for doing its job beautifully, while also questioning its validity. Just because I thought it doesn’t make it true. If we can release the story behind the sensation or release our grip on the thought itself, then we can simply be with the present moment."Dr. Marisa Kassimir, ND, Meira Healing
"Jes was heart and body, holding us in space and sprinkling in a wealth of wisdom."Participant, IJS Young Adult Retreat, 2024
When: Six Tuesdays, November 17–December 22, 2026, 7:00–8:15 PM ET / 4:00–5:15 PM PT.
Where: Zoom with recordings available.
Cost: Sliding scale, $180-360, choose the rate that best fits your means.
About the teacher
Jes Golden, PhD is a philosopher and Jewish meditation teacher. They hold a PhD in Philosophy and explore questions about the nature of bodily awareness, contemplative practice, and knowledge. They teach with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Or HaLev, and RUACH and hold a research affiliation with the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School / Mass General.
Tehom starts November 17, registration closes November 15.
Tehom is the deep: the primordial waters of creation in the opening verses of Genesis. Tehom is a cohort-based program to gain the skills necessary to go beyond the surface level of Jewish meditation practice. Tehom is part practice community and part systematic introduction to what Jewish meditation is and how to do it: we learn the foundations of this contemplative tradition while deepening our own consistent and ongoing practice in community.
Most people arrive at Jewish meditation either from an interest or curiosity in Buddhist practice, or a Jewish life that they want to be more embodied and soulful. Tehom is for both of these groups, as well as for those who are just beginning to engage with Jewish practice or those who have experienced Jewish meditation in one-off classes or on retreat and want to feel more at home in the practice, the philosophy, and the approach.
My own engagement with Judaism after a secular and assimilated upbringing began with Jewish meditation: before I knew the words, or when to sit or stand, I felt at home in the practice of attuning to the body, the breath, and awareness as expressions of divinity.
Jewish meditation has deep roots in Jewish text, prayer, and philosophy. As it is currently practiced, it builds on the writings, practices, and thoughts of various Kabbalistic and Hasidic thinkers: we orient to viewing Judaism as an inherently contemplative tradition, aimed at cultivating and sustaining awareness of divinity through action, ideas, and kavannot (intention).
Unlike Buddhism, which has an unbroken lineage, previous generations of Hasidic teachers were lost due to genocide and migration. The spread of Buddhism in the West has allowed recent generations of Jewish rabbis and contemplatives to begin to understand some of the states, stages, and contemplative development embedded in these texts. Teachers like Rabbi Dr. James Jacobson-Maisels, Founder & Spiritual Director of Or HaLev, have called this spiritual archaeology. This class orients practitioners to this important part of our lineage. We will ground ourselves deeply in the foundational Hasidic ideas underlying contemporary approaches to Jewish meditation while exploring where Jewish contemplative practice overlaps with Buddhist and secular mindfulness and where it diverges.