Please join us for this free book talk with author Yiscah Smith, who will teach from her new book Planting Seeds of the Divine: Torah Commentaries to Cultivate Your Spiritual Practice.

“Experiencing deep personal fulfillment, happiness, and sustenance comes from feeling connected to our authentic selves, which involves building an ongoing relationship with the Divine Presence within us”, says author Yiscah Smith. Quite organically, then, we may begin sensing the Divine in our interactions with other people. This is because for each of us, "our essence, as a creation by God, is God."

Planting Seeds of the Divine elucidates how Judaism’s sacred texts can provide the foundation for the “end destination” of experiencing intimate encounters with the Divine Presence within—the God-consciousness that so many of us seek and find elusive.

Imagining ourselves as spiritual gardeners, we can cultivate our unique gardens with seeds, centered on middot (emotional dispositions, character traits, spiritual sensitivities). Each seed corresponds to an aspirational Torah commentary, consisting of a selected Torah verse linked to one of the middot, with classical commentaries, teachings of Hasidic and Neo-Hasidic masters and the author’s own interpretation, concluding with a step-by-step spiritual practice to help us internalize that Torah portion’s middah.

Smith’s holistic approach engages the intellectual emotional, spiritual, psychological, and embodied dimensions on a journey of self-discovery through Torah - reclaiming a contemplative, experiential-theological language to the heart of religious discourse.

Please note that copies of the book will NOT be available at this event. If you would like a copy signed, please preorder (before June 1) or purchase ahead of time by clicking HERE.

   Yiscah Smith is a thought leader and spiritual activist committed to empowering 
   and ennobling others in the spiritual practice of encountering the Divine spark
   within and beyond. She teaches Jewish contemplative practice and spiritual texts
   at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem and for the online platform
   Applied Jewish Spirituality. She is the author of Forty Years in the Wilderness: My
   Journey to Authentic Living and founder of Conscious Community Nachlaot, an
   alternative prayer space in Jerusalem. As a lifetime learner, Yiscah presents a
   diverse palette of scholarship which includes the Chabad institutions of Torah, as
   well as The Jewish Theological Seminary and with independent scholars in
   Jerusalem. Her Authentic Jewish Living with Yiscah podcast episodes are available
   on platforms such as Spotify and Apple Podcasts.