Mitsui Institute for Jewish Embodiment
About the Institute
The Mitsui Institute for Jewish Embodiment is Mitsui Collective’s pathway to Jewish embodiment for organizations, professionals, and practitioners.
Mitsui Institute staff and faculty support communities by helping people:
Build and fortify communal connection, team dynamics, organizational culture, and confident, centered leadership for those in every role
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Understand the formative elements — from personal experience to society-wide ideologies — that shape our personal and collective identities and behaviors.
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Strengthen the bridge between learning and action to better integrate our personal, communal, and organizational values into daily actions and behaviors.
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Interrupt oppressive patterns — from racism to antisemitism to sexism and more — that constrict our ability to move through the world, and recalibrate ourselves with patterns that nourish, sustain, and keep us all safe.
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Strategize, plan, and facilitate innovative, grounded, and meaningful experiential learning through human-centered program design.
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Bring Tikkun Olam (healing work) into our care for ourselves, for others, and for our communities as we also do the larger work of systemic social change, becoming more practiced in our embodiment at all scales.
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What We Do
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Our research seeks to better understand identity formation, embodied impacts of multivalent oppression on those with intersectional identities, methodologies for holistic wellness, and cultural and spiritual lineages of embodiment.
See: Interwoven Oppressions — Unraveling the Impacts of Racism and Antisemitism as Dual Vectors of Trauma for Jews of Color at the Intersection of the Body. (pub. 2024)
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Mitsui Collective deeply values the current and historical work of Jewish embodiment in all its forms. Our field building work connects, supports, and engages Jewish embodiment practitioners and organizations across the landscape in order to learn and share best practice and continue the evolution of our field.
See: Mitsui Kollel Cohorts 1-3
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Training in Jewish embodiment is available for Jewish leaders, educators, communal professionals, facilitators, organizers, and more.
In addition to training programs we run in-house, we are available for both online and in-person training and work closely with clients to develop training that suits their needs, context, budget, and availability.
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Community workshops give your people an opportunity for introduction to Jewish embodiment and take a dive into specific topics, content, and application. Workshops are typically 1.5-3+ hours (online) or 3-6+ hours (in-person).
Immersions are longer and more intensive learning experiences that allow us to work in greater depth for truly transformative learning and growth. Immersions range from full-day to multi-day experiences, and can be designed and facilitated over both shorter periods of time or extended periods through repeat visits and ongoing work.
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Institute staff and faculty are available for both limited and ongoing consultation. We specialize in human-centered program design, organizational culture, transformative learning, counter-oppressive community safety, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) integration, identity development, mindfulness, conflict transformation, ritual design, earth-based Judaism, and more.
We are continually learning, growing, and expanding our areas of knowledge and expertise.
Institute Faculty
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Kohenet Shoshana Brown
they/she
Kohenet Shoshana A Brown, LMSW is a Black- mixed race Jewish femme who generates liberation and full self-hood in the essence of love. A healer, educator, and abolition organizer, they are a cofounder of the Black Jewish Liberation Collective and US Director of Pedagogy and Training for the Diaspora Alliance.Specialties:
- Restorative Justice
- Dance
- Earth-based spiritual practice
- Community organizing
- Counter-oppressive community safety -
Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife
she/they
Keshira is a Kohenet (Hebrew Priestess) and a bi-racial, queer Jewish person who delights in her work as a davennatrix (shlichat tzibbur), lifespiral ceremony/ritual creatrix, consultant, facilitator, teacher, liturgist and songstress.Specialties:
- Embodied Ritual
- Chanting
- creative (artistic) practice
- Facilitated conversation
- Liberatory prayer and spiritual practice -
Rabbi Rishe Groner
she/her
Rabbi Rishe Groner fuses her background in Chabad Chasidism with her experience in the world of nightlife and festivals to support people through personal growth with ancient tools of spiritual technology.Specialties:
- Conscious dance & ecstatic practice
- Divine Feminine
- Earth-based Jewish practice
- Kabbalah -
Sam Hipschman
they/them
Sam is a licensed clinical social worker who engages as a therapist, a community builder, and facilitator. They love crafting and gymnastics, and are based in Nipmuc, Pocumtuc, and Nonotuck lands of western Massachusetts.Specialties:
- Somatically-oriented psychotherapy
- Supporting explorations of embodied expressions of identity
- Growing Jewish community cultures that align values and actions -
Shira Kline
she/her
Shira Kline is a queer ritual and performance artist, recognized as a revolutionary educator and named one of the new re-engineers of Jewish life today. Co-founder and Spiritual Leader of Lab/Shul NYC, she practices in the field of sacred play, radical imagination, expansive heart and collective soul.Specialties:
- Song & Sound
- Sacred Play
- Ritual Craft and Artistry
- Immersive, Embodied Prayer
- Liturgical Exegesis -
Dr. Imani Romney-Rosa Chapman
she/ella
Dr. Imani Romney-Rosa Chapman, the founder and director of imani strategies, llc, is a powerful, dynamic, faith-filled, compassionate, change leader for equity. She has more than 30 years of experience organizing, educating and developing curriculum for social justice.
Specialties:
- Conflict transformation
- Mission alignment
- Team development
- Research -
Yoshi Silverstein
he/him
Yoshi Silverstein, MLA is a Chinese-Ashkenazi-American Jew who weaves decades of cross-disciplinary experience into contemporary embodiment approaches that allow us to move ever closer towards being the people and communities we deeply yearn to be.Specialties:
- Movement pedagogy & practice
- Counter-oppressive embodiment, identity formation & interpersonal community dynamics
- Embodied prayer & spirituality, song & music
- Experiential Jewish education
- Personal and communal safety -
Caroline Spikner
she/her
Caroline Spikner, MSW is a dancer, a yoga practitioner and a social worker passionate about using movement exploration as a means for healing, meditation and growth.Specialties:
- Dance
- Yoga
- Mindfulness
- Mental Health -
Ariana Starkman
she/her
Ariana Starkman is a multidisciplinary actor, mover, and artist working towards social change through theater and embodied learning and practice. She has studied acting in Moscow, Russia and Arezzo, Italy and brings her diverse experience into her work in both the front and back of house at Mitsui Collective.Specialties:
- Theatre for social change
- Breathwork
- Embodied storytelling
- Choreography
- Nervous system attunement and regulation -
Enzi Tanner
he/him
Enzi Tanner, LMSW is a Black American trans disabled and autistic Jew residing in Minneapolis on Dakota Land who brings an intersectional approach to all aspects of his work. Enzi has worked and supported folks in nonprofit advocacy, government, housing, and mental health and wellness. Enzi has a love for Torah and integrating Jewish text and tradition into his work.Specialties:
- Gender inclusivity
- Community Safety
- Neurodivergence
- Antiracism
- Systemic healing
