I really noticed it today — the quality of light at 4pm is a little more slanted than it was even ten days ago. Summer is being eased out. And even though, of course, I know it’s coming, I’m struck that Rosh Hashanah is less than two weeks away. I’m feeling the subtle tug of the season of return, the season of t’shuvah — the coming back to who I meant to be.

Teshuvah is often translated as repentance. But it pops up in my mind as that finger-pointing, stick-swinging Rafiki from Lion King, saying “think again!” We can go through much of a year on a kind of autopilot. Our habits, good ones and not-so-good ones, driving our actions so subtly that we barely notice them as habits at all. But the calendar shifts. The light changes angle. The ads we see are back-to-school and fall fashion. Our schedules reset. Something is ending, something else is beginning. Pay attention. Check in. How are those habits working for me? What did I mean to start doing differently? What did I mean to return to?

Maybe when the meditation reminder lands in your inbox there’s an inner “oh yeah, I meant to do that…” or “I’ve been meaning to get back to that.” I could be talking about exercise, or writing, or calling your brother more — pick your own practice — but let’s use the meditation example, since it’s one a lot of you have already thought about starting, or restarting.

So here’s the reminder email with the Zoom link in your inbox, and you’re looking at it. Maybe your schedule is miraculously clear at that time and you think, maybe this time! Or your to-do list feels like it’s pressing down on your head and shoulders, and there’s no way. Maybe recent articles or podcasts about the benefits of meditation come to mind for a second, and you wish you could do it but there’s so much to get done. Or you’re just too tired. Maybe a previous meditation experience comes to mind — good or bad.

Notice what is happening right then. Notice all the things that show up between you and joining that day’s meditation. That is not a personal failing. It’s normal. These obstacles are super common. And they are not yours alone. Teachers have been naming it for a long time. In the Buddhist tradition, the meditation teacher Jack Kornfield writes about how ancient teachers described these obstacles as demons — showing up first as tempting distractions, then as irritation or doubt. Different traditions, same experience: something always shows up between you and the meditation cushion.

The answer is not to buckle down and try harder. It is not to agree with the inner critic that is all too happy to read you a litany of your imagined shortcomings.

Here’s an alternate teshuvah suggestion for any of the things you want to return to or meant to begin. Next time, for example, the Tiferet Project meditation reminder shows up, give it one minute before you decide anything. Check your breath. Scan your body for where it’s holding tension. Notice — the “let’s do this instead” energy. Notice any irritation, or doubt. Maybe sit down, even for five minutes, and notice if and how the breath or tension in the body shifts any amount. Notice how emotional feelings, and that self-talk, shift and change — or not.

And good news! You don’t have to fix any of it. Nothing has to change. Just notice. If your mind “changes the channel,” gently see if you can change it back — return to resting your attention on the breath and body, noticing what they are like. Noticing any self-talk or thoughts that pop up. That noticing — that’s already a real step toward meditating. Observing what’s going on without needing to do anything about it in the moment.

This is easier to do when you’re not doing it alone. So maybe next time the reminder comes, log on and join the group. Listen to the Torah teaching (or turn your sound off!). And if you have to leave partway through, you have to leave. No judgment.

Tiferet Project is based on the strong belief that these practices can nourish and strengthen our inner lives while also supporting our ability to do good in the world. This is a good season to come back to that and start again.

Every time I sit down to prepare a meditation session, I feel the tug to come up with something new, something cool, some fresh revelatory way to frame what we’re doing. And I laugh at that predictable tug to do something new and interesting, because each time we’re basically doing the same thing—sitting, breathing, noticing the attention wandering, bringing the attention back.

So here we are in January, that annual festival of newness. New year, new you! New resolutions, new gym membership, new diet plan, new productivity system. We know how this goes. By February, most of these bright, shiny intentions will have lost their luster. Can’t make time for the gym because other things are more critical. The new diet will seem too complicated, too time-consuming, too restrictive. We’ll fall back to our regular habits—or never leave them—adding a layer of guilt and self-judgment.

But what if the problem isn’t lack of will? What if it isn’t a lack in us at all? What if we’re focusing on the wrong thing entirely?

The Lure of What’s New

New things attract us—literally. They grab our attention, turn our heads, make us reach for a credit card. There’s actually good reason for this: novelty activates dopamine in our brains, which helps us learn. When we encounter something new, our neurons light up with possibility. This is healthy and necessary.

Here’s where it gets tricky. That same dopamine system can turn into a hamster wheel. We get a hit of satisfaction from the new thing—the new face cream, the new app, the new relationship—and for a moment, it feels like “this” might be it! The thing that finally makes me happy or whole or acceptable or okay. When that feeling fades (as it always does), we’re off chasing the next thing. The problem isn’t that we wanted something; it’s that we tried to make that thing deliver more than it possibly could.

The psychiatrist and Buddhist teacher Mark Epstein makes a crucial distinction: the problem isn’t desire itself—it’s clinging to our desires. Desire is natural, even necessary. We feel incomplete and so desire connection. We feel restless and want ease. This longing is part of being human; it moves us forward. But clinging is what happens when we can’t tolerate the gap between what we hoped for and what we actually get. When desire hardens into demand—when we insist the object be more satisfying than it can possibly be—we’re fighting with reality itself.

Every New Year’s resolution contains this gap. We imagine the new version of ourselves—fit, organized, fluent in Spanish or Hebrew—and we want it to fix something. When January 30th comes around and we’re still ourselves, the gap becomes obvious. We may find ourselves doubling down (clinging harder) or already looking for the next new thing.

Two Kinds of New

Jewish morning liturgy includes these words: 

וּבְטוּבוֹ מְחַדֵּשׁ בְּכָל־יוֹם תָּמִיד מַעֲשֵׂה בְרֵאשִׁית:

Uv’tuvo m’chadeish b’chol yom tamid ma’aseh b’reishit—

“In Your goodness, You daily, continually, renew creation.” 

Every morning, we’re reminded that creation itself is being renewed, made fresh. Not that something *different* is being created, but that what “is” keeps arriving, moment by moment, as if for the first time. I see it as the Source of Life offering a life lesson.

This is very different from our usual novelty-seeking. It’s not about getting something new; it’s about meeting what’s already here with fresh eyes.

The Buddhist teacher Shunryu Suzuki put it simply: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.” When we approach something as a beginner—even something we’ve done a thousand times—we’re open, curious, not bound by assumptions about how it should go. It’s the opposite of ignorance because it explicitly doesn’t ignore those things that are achingly familiar, but perhaps hard to know about ourselves.

Beginner’s mind and clinging can’t coexist. When we’re caught by clinging, we’re locked onto how we think things should be and how they should turn out. Beginner’s mind says, “I don’t know. Let me see.”

What Practice Actually Does

When I lead the Tiferet Project meditation group, there are always the same two parts to our time. First, engaging with Jewish texts. These texts are old. But we’re reading them from a new orientation—a contemplative orientation. Then we do a simple guided meditation that always includes this:

Sit any way that lets you be relaxed and alert.  
Rest attention on your breath.  
Notice when your mind wanders.  
Gently bring your attention back.
That’s it. Same thing, over and over.

What makes this bearable—more than bearable, actually transformative—is that it trains us to be with the gap. The space between what we want (a calm mind, a sense of well-being, of awe, feeling of connection) and what we may actually get (this breath, restlessness, this familiar wandering thought, physical discomfort, boredom). Practice teaches us to linger there without immediately reaching for something to fill the gap or running away to something new.

This is hard. Our nervous system wants to automatically steer us back to familiar ground. When we feel boredom, restlessness, or the itch of wanting, everything in us says: “Do something. Fix this. Find relief.”

What if we just… didn’t? What if we felt the feeling, noticed the wanting, and let it be there without acting on it?

This isn’t ignoring. It’s not trying to get rid of our desires or pretending we don’t want things. It’s making room for the full experience—the longing and the reality, the hope and the disappointment, the wanting and the not-yet-having. When we can hold all of that without needing to immediately react to make the feeling go away, something shifts. We stop being yanked around by every passing desire. We can pause and ask: Is this a wholesome wanting, something that might actually help? Or is this me just reaching for the next distraction?

Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) understood this.  הֲבֵ֤ל הֲבָלִים֙ “Havel havalim”, the text repeats—often translated as “vanity of vanities,” but closer to “breath of breaths” or “emptying upon emptying.” Each moment is like a breath: it arises, exists briefly, and empties or pours into the next moment. We can use up our energy trying to grab and hold what cannot be held—or as Kohelet calls it, “a useless panting after wind.” Or we can let each moment come and go, meeting each one with some equanimity.

An Invitation, Not a Resolution

So here’s what I’m not suggesting for 2026: a new practice, a better technique, a shinier spiritual path.

What I am suggesting: Keep showing up to the same old practice. Sit in the same way you sat yesterday. Rest your attention on the breath in the same way you’ve rested it a hundred times before. But practice meeting it freshly. What’s it like this time? Practice not knowing how it will be. Practice tolerating the gap between what you hope meditation will give you and what it actually offers in any given moment.

This is how we train ourselves to hold habits more lightly, so reactivity grabs us less tightly. To respond instead of react. To question our tightly-held views—about ourselves, about others, about what we think we need to be happy. To get unstuck from the patterns that keep causing us pain.

And yes, there’s something wonderfully paradoxical about this. We learn and grow through iteration, through repetition and consistency, through doing the same thing over and over with patience and attention. Not through constant novelty, but through renewed relationship to what’s already here.

It’s been said that  “The problem is not desire. It’s that your desires are too small.” Maybe our New Year’s resolutions fail not because we want too much, but because we’re settling for too little. A new body, a new habit, a new achievement—nothing wrong with these, but they’re not what we’re actually yearning for.

What if the desire underneath all our smaller desires is the longing to fully inhabit our actual lives? Not a marketing picture of what we should want. To be free from the constant grasping and pushing away? To meet each moment—even the boring, difficult, ordinary ones—with some tenderness and attention?

With deep gratitude to all of you who are already showing up for each other and this practice. If you’ve been thinking about it, jump in! (Make a no-resolution resolution?) No experience required, no prerequisites, nothing new you need to acquire first. Just show up. Again and again. The same old practice, new each time.

—–

May we hold our opinions and desires lightly in 2026. May we practice with humility and patience, loosening the grip of the next shiny thing, and see what “is” with fresh eyes.

We’re entering Heshvan, often called Mar Heshvan (“bitter Heshvan”) for its lack of holidays. After the spiritual intensity of Tishrei, Heshvan offers a chance to integrate, to listen deeply, to discover clarity in quietness.

This timing feels particularly relevant as many of us are feeling drained by a contentious election season, when our minds might feel like corks tossed on stormy seas. In such times, we might be tempted to seek what the Alter of Kelm, called “walking with serenity” – a complete escape from agitation. While the Alter recognized mental tranquility as “the crown of virtues”, he is clear that mental tranquility or menuchat ha-nefesh is not simply seeking complete escape from agitation. It’s not about “making it all go away.”

Look at Noah, whose name means rest and comfort, and whose story we read this month. “Behold how anxious he was”, the Alter said about Noah, inviting us to notice how anxious Noah was in caring for the animals of the ark. Noah shows us a different kind of calm – one that allows us to focus our anxiety, to redirect our attention to what matters. When our minds are flooded, agitated by worry over our own situation, we may struggle to see clearly. But as we cultivate genuine inner calm, we can become more capable of seeing and responding to the needs of others.

Susan Berrin, in “Celebrating the New Moon,” invites us to “Stay awhile in the empty place that Heshvan creates. The Shekhinah is as much in the empty spaces as in the full ones, residing in the pauses between words as much as in the words themselves.” This month, with its relative quiet in the Jewish calendar, offers us an opportunity to explore this deeper form of calm – not as an escape from the world’s concerns, but as a way to engage with them more wholly and effectively.

This is why we’re excited to share our new Mussar Yoga series (see below), exploring menuchat ha-nefesh (calmness), among other soul traits. We will explore them through movement and contemplative practice. As Alan Morinis suggests, this isn’t about going to sleep or checking out – it’s about being present with what is, finding ways to know anxiety without being overwhelmed by it.

Like the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out, like the waxing and waning of the moon itself, we move through times of intensity and times of integration. This Heshvan, we invite you to join us in exploring what clarity might emerge when we rest in the quiet, opening ourselves to deeper awareness of both our own hearts and the needs of those around us.

In the Joseph story, when  “the seven years of famine set in, just as Joseph had foretold. There was famine in all lands, but throughout the land of Egypt there was bread.”  Gen 41:54  Then, at Jacob’s bidding “…ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to get grain rations in Egypt.” Gen 42:3 These are part of the chain of events that find Joseph’s brothers bowing down before him, unaware that they were acting out the exact scene that had so outraged them when they first heard and interpreted it from the dream Joseph had shared with them in his graceless, cosseted, seventeen year old way.

Now Joseph’s brothers came and bowed low to him, with their faces to the ground. When Joseph saw his brothers, he recognized them, and he acted like a stranger toward them. Gen 42:6-7

Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev teaches that when the Torah says, he acted like a stranger toward them, we are meant to understand this as evidence of Joseph’s righteousness. How so? Levi Yitzhak teaches that it’s only natural when someone has been defeated by someone they know, where the one loses and the other one wins, there can be a painful edge to the loss. But when they are defeated by someone they don’t know, the loss is not as painful. Now when his brothers bowed low to Joseph and he held power over them, it’s not hard to imagine Joseph wanting a big reveal and a little payback. These brothers who had brutally betrayed him when he was defenseless were at his mercy in that moment and yet, instead of rebuking them or confronting them with their history he acted like a stranger toward them.

Levi Yitzhak teaches that this was Joseph’s righteousness, that Joseph acted like a stranger toward them:

so they would not be bitter and it would appear to them that they were bowing to someone else . . . Indeed, Joseph was a king, but they were untroubled by this because they thought they were bowing to another king. When the Torah says that “they bowed low to him…” and “he recognized them” it means, he recognized that they would suffer if he disclosed his true identity, so “he acted like a stranger toward them,” so they would not suffer on account of his victory over them.

I learned from my friend, chevruta and Vipassana teacher, Rhonda Rosen, the Buddhist teaching that “Not knowing is most intimate.” Joseph could have held on to the idea that his brothers were still the same brothers he had known—the ones who had thrown him into the pit. One can imagine everyone taking up their old family roles, their old resentments, old pain, old narratives. The truth is that they all had been changed over time. Operating from the idea that they knew what there was to know about each other would only obscure the reality before them. In “acting like a stranger”, Joseph not only spared his brothers pain, as Levi Yitzhak taught, but where pain causes constriction, it’s opposite creates space – and Joseph’s deliberate action created the space that allowed his brothers to show up. It didn’t eliminate their history. It didn’t eliminate their responsibility or guilt.  But by “not knowing”, by not bringing his past into it, Joseph was able to listen with an open heart to the brothers that were actually in front of him. His “not knowing” allowed his love to surface — the love that had made the original betrayal so acute in the first place and showed up in the tears he hid in their presence. In acting like a stranger toward his brothers, Joseph made space for transformation, space for something new to develop.

An invitation to practice:

In the next days, either by memory – or by actually writing them down on a slip of paper (that you can glance at through the day,) bring those two ideas to your awareness:

“Acting like a stranger toward them”

                    “ Not knowing is most intimate.”

As you interact with people, experiment with allowing what you “know” about them to subside. It may be useful to try this with people you are most comfortable interacting with first – and then try it with people with whom you may have a little friction. Of course, the opposite may also be true! So choose people and/or situations for practice as wisely as you are able. Allow past resentments to rest, leave the past out of this present interaction to the best of your ability. Listen with and try to speak from an open heart. Notice when thoughts form in your mind that label that person. Notice the mental short cuts that tell you “how they are” and “what they are like.” Notice when thoughts send you down a cascade of prediction and expectations, maybe even a clinging to particular outcomes (be like you were last week when you were doing what I wanted!)  And finally, I invite you to notice when you’ve made space for something new to develop.

Source for Kedushat Levi teaching :

Speaking Torah, vol 1; Arthur Green, with Ebn Leder, Ariel Evan Mayes and Or N. Rose

Offered to our JMMTT5 cohort by Julie Newman, December 5, 2018