Disability Wisdom As Soul Care
With Rabbi Lauren Tuchman
Disability Wisdom as Soul Care is a Mussar va’ad/study group that centers disabled experiences and equips participants with Jewish spiritual wisdom and tools for personal and spiritual development, builds much-needed community, and helps support anti-ableism justice work.
We will approach learning from a disability wisdom perspective and honor Torah found in classic Jewish texts and in those from Jews and others with disabilities. We believe spiritual wisdom can be found in many places and through many voices. We honor that our spiritual practice is inseparable from our embodied experiences. We will bring our full selves to developing our spiritual practice together as we create a holy container for practice and growth.
​
We're currently piloting two cohorts for this program, and hope to open applications for fall/winter cohorts in a few months. Please fill out the below interest form and select this program to stay in the loop for future cohorts.
The work of more deeply developing the inner and spiritual lives of Jews with disabilities is essential to providing care, offering repair, and building a more inclusive and anti-ableist community.
Our Theory of Change
By creating access points to this area of Torah and applied spiritual practice, we are teaching the relevance of Torah-based values and ideas, how to apply them to accessibility and inclusion advocacy, and creating community around Torah and Jewish study. Through teaching these spiritual tools to folks with disabilities and their allies, participants will have new wells of inspiration, deeper connections to Jewish faith and community, and renewed groundedness in the fight for disability justice. With funding for this program, Kirva will be able to continue teaching this new curriculum for years to come as a valued addition to our suite of curricula.
Meet Rabbi Lauren
Rabbi Lauren Tuchman is a sought after speaker, spiritual leader and educator, who was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in 2018. She teaches, provides workshops and consulting to individuals and organizations within and outside of the Jewish community on a variety of matters pertinent to disability access and inclusion. She was named to the New York Jewish Week’s 36 To Watch for her innovative leadership concerning inclusion of Jews with disabilities in all aspects of Jewish life. In 2017, she delivered an ELI Talk entitled We All Were at Sinai: The Transformative Power of Inclusive Torah. In addition to her work in the disability inclusion space, Rabbi Tuchman passionately believes in the power of spiritual and contemplative practice as a path of transformational personal and collective change for the Jewish world and beyond. In 2024, she launched Disability Wisdom As Soul Care in partnership with Kirva, formerly The Inside Out Wisdom and Action Project. She is an alum of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s Clergy Leadership Program and is currently training to become a Jewish mindfulness teacher under the auspices of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and Or haLev. In 2022, she completed Flourish: an immersive in mindfulness practices under the direction of expert mindfulness teacher, Yael Shy. She is a SVARA fellow, completing the SVARA Kolel in 2019. She continues to be a regular teacher with SVARA.
Thank you to Our Funders
This program is made possible thanks to generous funding from the Covenant Foundation, and the Amy Adina Schulman Fund.
​
We are actively seeking funding for the continuation of this program. If you'd like to donate any amount towards this program, please be in touch with Sam, and learn more about our funding needs here.
