The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute
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Chabad of Downtown Boston
Location 16 Piedmont St, Boston, MA 02116 USA
Phone6172977282
Upcoming Course: Worrier to Warrior

We yearn to feel happy, self-assured, and enthusiastic, yet we’re consumed by feelings of doubt, regret, insecurity, and suffering. Do our delicate positive emotions have a fighting chance at being in control? This course explores negative emotions in a completely new light, offering spiritual mechanisms that allow us to remain upbeat no matter what life brings.

Course Details
Lesson 1 The Authentic You

Addressing Impostor Syndrome
Positive emotions are paramount for successful living, but genuine happiness and contentment are highly elusive. A common challenge is discomfort with our own accomplishments simply because we feel hypocritical. This lesson explores why positivity is critical, charts a path to tackling impediments to happier living, and unveils the means of embracing and effectively expressing our innate authenticity.
 

Lesson 2 The Gift of the Flaw

Addressing Shame, Frustration, and Feelings of Inadequacy
Self-disappointment can be debilitating: we long to view ourselves as ethical individuals but are frustrated at perpetually wrestling with character flaws such as pettiness, greed, thoughtlessness, anger, lack of integrity, or spiritual insensitivity. Reflecting on our flaws produces a destructive sense of shame and inadequacy. This lesson explains the intended role of character flaws in the human condition and explores methods of maintaining genuine optimism and positivity despite their lingering presence.
 

Lesson 3 Not Guilty

Addressing Unhealthy Guilt
We all slip up at times, sometimes drastically, and it is natural and healthy to experience regret or guilt. However, if such emotions become paralyzing and distressful, they seriously impede our efforts to maintain positive and successful living. This lesson explores the inner workings of guilt and regret and delivers a transformative method of tackling guilt and spinning it into a catalyst for positive change.
 

Lesson 4 The Light in the Tunnel

Addressing Pain, Anguish, and Anxiety
Harsh reality can bring genuine suffering and sadness, swiftly deflating the most optimistic attitudes. Well-meaning reminders that time heals, or that G-d knows what is best, do little to heal the searing pain of open wounds. This lesson explores methods of shifting our internal perspectives to allow the sun to shine in our lives despite the stark reality of our suffering.
 

Lesson 5 Satisfaction Guaranteed

Finding Happiness and Fulfillment
Despite considering ourselves successful in terms of health, finances, and relationships, we sometimes fall into a funk, feeling unexplainably lackadaisical or unhappy. This lesson explores the inner workings of happiness and examines our instinctive methods of securing satisfaction. It then delivers a shift in perspective that sets a workable goal of inner contentment and fulfillment.

Lesson 6 Beyond Chemistry

Remodeling Our Approach to Love and Relationships
Relationships are the most rewarding and challenging features of human life. Healthy relationships are critical to positive emotions, but they are highly elusive. This lesson introduces a significant shift in the way we view the foundation upon which all of our relationships are based. This new perspective empowers us to enjoy better, lasting, and more genuine relationships, even with individuals with whom we share little in common.

Dates & Times
The course date hasn't yet been announced for this location. Please email rabbi@Chabaddowntownboston.org or call 6172977282 for more info.
Upcoming Course: Judaism's Gifts to the World

Once considered preposterous, many of Judaism’s revolutionary teachings are today’s universal values that are taken for granted. The history of the gradual transition of attitudes on values is as instructive as it is fascinating. An analysis of Jewish contributions past and present allows us to define ways in which Judaism can continue serving as a beacon of light and wisdom for all humanity.

Dates & Times
The course date hasn't yet been announced for this location. Please email rabbi@Chabaddowntownboston.org or call 6172977282 for more info.
Upcoming Course: Secrets of the Bible

The Bible is rich in tales, from the Garden of Eden to Noah’s Ark, from the selling of Joseph to Moses’s breaking of the Tablets. But what do these stories truly tell us? Review six famous and infamous biblical stories, and investigate the questions and mysteries they raise under the lens of the Torah’s mystical insights. The results bear both cosmic significance and practical relevance.   

Dates & Times
The course date hasn't yet been announced for this location. Please email rabbi@Chabaddowntownboston.org or call 6172977282 for more info.
Endorsements Endorsements, Reviews and Comments of JLI's Courses and Programs.
Professor Judea Pearl (Father of Daniel Pearl) Director, Cognitive Systems Laboratory, University of California, Los Angeles

It is history that gives humans the sense of immortality and a bond that transcends passing differences. I applaud JLI for launching this worldwide study of Jewish history, a unique opportunity to rediscover our collective identity.

Natan Sharansky Noted Soviet dissident, Former Member of Israeli Knesset

In these tumultuous times, strengthening our identity is critical. JLI's course, The Land and the Spirit, provides an intriguing opportunity to connect to our roots, to be empowered by a personal link with our people and history, and to understand our bond to Israel. It is only by drawing a clear line from the past to the present that each of us can chart a course for a creative, constructive, and fulfilling future as part of the Jewish People.

Professor Alan M. Dershowitz Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

I found the Rohr JLI course You Be The Judge fascinating. If my first-year students had been exposed to this material before starting law school, they would be better prepared for the rigors of the Socratic method.

Elyakim Rubinstein Israeli Supreme Court Justice, Former Attorney General of Israel

Many thanks for sharing with me the exciting Rohr JLI curriculum of You Be The Judge and for the excellent idea of bringing the treasure of Jewish law, a major point of Jewish life and Jewish ethos, to the attention of interested people.

Ellen Langer, PhD Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, Bestselling Author of eleven books including Mindfulness, Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and The Power of Possibility, Cambridge, MA

On the level of the individual to the level of culture, the ills we experience, by and large, result from mindlessness. The wisdom discussed in Toward a Meaningful Life should be widely read to help provoke a reversal of this trend and lead us to mindful lives full of everyday meaning.

Professor Jonathan D. Sarna Director, Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University

I am delighted to learn that the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute has created the course entitled Flashbacks in Jewish History. The great encounters between Judaism and its surrounding civilizations are of paramount importance for anyone seeking to understand Jewish life in the past as well as in the present.

Sir Martin Gilbert Leading Historian Official Biographer of Sir Winston Churchill

The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute and Rabbi Aaron Herman are to be congratulated for their challenging course, The Land and The Spirit, in which the spiritual values and centrality of the Land of Israel are expounded through a fascinating range of religious and secular texts. These texts span a remarkably wide range of opinions, from Moses to Herzl, from Rashi to Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, from Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson to Natan Sharansky (There is No Zionism Without Judaism), from the Talmud to the opinion writers of the Jerusalem Post. These texts, like the course itself, will serve a noble cause in stimulating thought and encouraging understanding.

Marlene Post President, Hadassah International, Chair for North America, Birthright Israel (Taglit)

The story of our people is filled with tales of leadership and vision, kindness and compassion. These are the gifts that enriched our own communities, and they are gifts we have shared with others around the world. The past provides us the inspiration to continue to work for the betterment of society.

Past Courses

Crime and Consequence

February 2019
Crime and Consequence

When innocent people are wrongly convicted...
When "correctional facilities" turn first-time offenders into hardened criminals...
When known murderers walk free on a technicality …
Fairness in justice simply cannot be left to chance.

In Crime and Consequence, we explore 3000 years of Jewish wisdom concerning criminal convictions, sentencing, crime prevention, and rehabilitation. We challenge our thinking, pondering the application of Talmudic principles to real and complex, modern-day cases, and we get to the heart of questions such as:

Should we consider testimonies given in exchange for a reduced sentence as reliable evidence?
What is the goal of punishing criminals? is it to gain retribution for the victim, keep criminals off the streets and safeguard from future crime, set an example and instill the fear of law, or to rehabilitate the criminal and reintroduce him to society?
Is life-without-parole a justifiable penalty? Is it within our right to sentence a man to death? When would these be warranted? Is there a better way?

With All My Heart

May 2019
With All My Heart

Whether you’re seeking relief from stress; you’re hoping for focus, clarity, and connection to a raw and vulnerable place deep within you; or you just want to start each day from a positive, humble, and grateful frame of mind, this course is for you.

Jewish wisdom teaches profound techniques to give wings to our emotions and words to our yearnings, allowing us to make contact and communicate with something larger than ourselves and feel comfort and shelter within a reality that’s more whole, more intense, more real, and more beautiful.
 

Wrestling with Faith

October 2018
Wrestling with Faith

Most people, even the devout, struggle with beliefs about G-d. It is easy, for example, to affirm the basic tenets of Judaism during a prayer service, but when it comes to trusting G-d with our daily decisions, many share a secret, painful fear that G-d isn’t really looking out for them. Many of us have been brought up under the assumption that mainstream science is incompatible with our Jewish faith. So when we see compelling evidence for biological evolution, for example, we feel forced to choose between science and our faith. Wrestling with Faith was created to tackle questions like these—the “big issues” that keep people from an intimate relationship with G-d. The course acknowledges the often unspoken doubts and fears that all people share, and seizes their invitation for us to dig deeper for the answers.

What Is?

April 2018
What Is?

Imagine that you were able to rethink everything you knew about the universe, the laws of nature, your own consciousness, and the very idea of existence and reality. Imagine the new insights you will gain, the fresh perspective with which you will embark on the journey of life each morning.

What is? does exactly that. Drawing on the wisdom of Chassidic teaching, the most basic building blocks of existence are reexamined from the bottom up, revolutionizing our understanding of life, reality, and our place in the world.

Communication: Its Art and Soul

January 2018
Communication: Its Art and Soul

Can you express yourself effectively in 140 characters or less? Should you?

The rise of the internet, mobile phones, and social media has completely changed the way we relate, interact, and communicate with one another—and it’s high time we reclaim this lost art.

In Jewish philosophy, communication is more than just a tool: it is who we are. Humans are defined as communicative beings with a communicative soul, and aligning ourselves with this soul is our raison d’être.

In Communication: Its Art and Soul, we contrast Jewish thought with scientific discovery to unearth the essence of communication and how to utilize its powers to better ourselves, our relationships, and all of society

Great Debates

October 2017
Great Debates

Debate is not only encouraged within Judaism but resides at the very heart of our history and theology. Great Debates in Jewish History explores six fundamental conflicts that pitted the greatest Jewish minds against each other—six instances of divergent perspectives, including several that are still debated today.

Discover stirring and surprising accounts that span two millennia of Jewish disputation, reflecting the panorama of Jewish history and its monumental political, ethical, and spiritual challenges. Encounter the gripping narratives of six fascinating eras, the intellectual tension and points of view they unearth, and the light they shed on the most fundamental of Jewish beliefs.