By Dr. Judith Shapero

• “It is beautiful to have this safe space to express myself with you sisters.”
• “These words filled my messy soul with light.”
• “I've never looked at a Torah text this way until tonight.”
• “It doesn’t matter who you are - just that you want to be there is enough -- and that’s just gorgeous.”

These heartfelt testimonials reflect the impact of SVIVAH’s groundbreaking programs, which offer pastorally-infused Torah learning and community-building designed for Jewish women of all backgrounds. How did SVIVAH create such an inspiring community? What can we, as Jewish educators, pastoral guides, leaders, and learners, glean in order to make our experiences more powerful? Specifically, what can we learn about the synergy between Torah education and pastoral-emotional well-being? This article[1] will 1) explore three key areas of this powerful synergy – the content of SVIVAH’s workshops, the training it provides its educators, and its workshop methodology – 2) articulate the reasons this integration of Torah learning with pastoral-emotional care builds a caring community; and 3) outline insights educators and institutions can apply in their own settings.

Who is SVIVAH and what is HerTorah?  

SVIVAH, Hebrew for “surrounding her,” defines itself as a “multigenerational, inclusive, powerful community of Jewish women” (SVIVAH, 2021c) that is “committed to creating communal empowerment and support” (Mortkowitz & Sperling, 2022).  Among SVIVAH’s many offerings, its signature HerTorah program recruits top scholar-educators to teach Torah and aims to “use our foundational Torah text as a medium for true community and connection building” (SVIVAH, 2021b).

SVIVAH’s pastorally infused Torah programs are led by its founding Director Ariele Mortkowitz, HerTorah Director Rabbanit Aliza Sperling, and Director of Pastoral Education, Rabbanit Dalia Davis. These leaders conceive and design the HerTorah programs, reach out to the community, recruit and train the educators for each workshop, and facilitate the learning. Each HerTorah workshop, held roughly monthly, attracts an average of 122 learners (Covenant Foundation, 2025), all of whom participate online.

Content of SVIVAH’s Programs Integrating Torah Teaching and Emotional-Pastoral Care

SVIVAH prioritizes creating a supportive community. For HerTorah workshops, the leaders choose Torah texts and approaches to those texts that serve this greater goal. They don’t start with the question of “What Torah do we want to teach?” but rather, “What Torah do people need?” (Sperling). The leaders then recruit Torah scholar-educators and pastoral and mental health experts in that particular area to teach in their workshops.

For example, a HerTorah Shavuot workshop on the Book of Ruth focused on how the complicated mentor-mentee relationship embodied by Naomi and Ruth might resonate for our lives today. To that end, the leaders did not ask their scholar-educators to just “give us your best shiur [lesson] on Megillat Ruth,” but rather to “see how this specific aspect plays out” (Schiowitz). With two Torah scholars teaching and three individuals sharing personal stories, the workshop explored power dynamics, how blind trust can be both beautiful and potentially lead to abuse, and how to hold and be held when we don’t have the answers ourselves.

Similarly, a workshop on Passover had a particular emotional-pastoral focus: the redemptive power of speech. The teacher, Rabbi Maya Zinkow, used the Passover Haggadah’s labeling of the Four Children to provoke a discussion about the dangers of assigning labels and judging others. She related this to the labeling (e.g., Zionist and anti-Zionist) and to the divisiveness she sees as a Hillel director on campus. The second teacher, Rabbi Dr. Erin Lieb Smokler, used a Chassidic text to affirm that “life is complex, difficult, and messy, and that’s okay.” The teaching of the texts served the holistic goal of resonating with participants’ feelings of imperfection and explored how speech can be harnessed either to divide us or to heal.

The workshop “A Time to Dance” wove together the Simchat Torah anniversary of the October 7th massacre at the Nova dance festival with ideas about the power of dance. Mortkowitz and Davis framed the learning with personal stories. Then JTS Professor Amy Kalmanofsky presented biblical texts about dance, showing how it is often connected to women, how it “captures an intrinsic relationship between suffering and joy,” and is a moment of “transformation.” Subsequently, Naama Sadan, a follower of a mystical school of Judaism, shared various musings, such as how “our bodies are wrapped in divine light.” A dance therapist then led the participants in a dance workshop where they were encouraged to use dance to explore their feelings. Finally, the participants learned and recorded a dance that was commissioned by a family of a Nova festival victim, to send to the family and give them strength. The workshop’s elements coalesced to address the pastoral-emotional question of, “How can we dance again?”

For these and the other HerTorah workshops, [2] SVIVAH’s leaders begin designing the Torah teaching by choosing the specific pastoral-emotional goal of the workshop, ultimately tied into their larger HerTorah purpose of using “our foundational Torah text as a medium for true community and connection building” (SVIVAH, 2021b). The leaders then choose specific Torah educators and mental health specialists to teach aligned with those goals.

Educating the Educators

All HerTorah educators are top scholars and highly experienced Torah teachers.[3] However, SVIVAH’s leaders recognized a need for these scholar-educators to be aware of the pastoral-emotional impact their teaching might evoke in learners, especially during these fraught times.  For example, how would teaching a text from the Books of Esther or Eichah that alludes to gender-based violence be received by women who have experienced such violence themselves?  Texts might trigger complicated feelings when taught without explicit empathy.

The organization’s leaders, therefore, created a powerful system for guiding scholars to teach Torah with pastoral-emotional sensitivity. The goal was to “prepare Torah educators by giving them tools they did not get in their semicha or PhD” (Sperling).[4] Mortkowitz explains that “you can’t just open a Pandora’s Box. You need to tend to these emotions. And [our system] gives teachers the awareness, the tools, and the confidence to do so.”

The training process itself consists of a pre-workshop joint meeting between the selected HerTorah educators, the SVIVAH leaders, and relevant mental health professionals. This meeting is designed to give HerTorah teachers the opportunity to ask the mental health professionals questions about potential emotional issues arising from the Torah passages they might be teaching, and for the mental health professionals to offer the teachers strategies for emotionally supporting learners. The meeting is also designed to define a common purpose and to align the HerTorah educators’ texts and teachings with SVIVAH’s specific emotional-pastoral goals of each workshop.

Through this process, the educators gain valuable skills. They become aware of the distinct goals of a SVIVAH Torah session: to enable learners to “interpret Torah in a way that resonates with each individual personally, and not just intellectually, but also psychologically and emotionally” (Schiowitz). Furthermore, they understand that SVIVAH’s primary goal is creating community, with Torah study serving this purpose: it is about “having the text be what brings the community together, but the community is the focus” (Tanchel). Educators also recognize SVIVAH’s openness in welcoming women of all backgrounds and skill levels, ensuring participants experience “warmth, authenticity, and acceptance” (Tanchel). Educator Rabbanit Thomas-Newborn noted that she “would not have had the awareness of the diversity and the open heart and the need for the warm pastoral” elements if not for the pre-workshop meeting. This collaborative process “aligns the teaching with SVIVAH’s vision” (Benchimol), and “deepen[s the educators’] readiness to teach the class” to a unique SVIVAH audience that is “diverse, has a range of skills, and has a desire to have a safe women’s space that can uplift them” (Thomas-Newborn). Schiowitz appreciated that SVIVAH’s collaborative meeting “brought us into the bigger process… and was necessary [for us] to reach more holistic goals.”  This collaboration generates a thoughtful exchange of ideas, preparing the educators to lead a HerTorah workshop that flows smoothly and explores emotionally resonant ideas anchored in Torah.

Powerful Methodology

In addition to aligning around a powerful emotional-pastoral goal (see above), all the sessions follow a consistent framework. Mortkowitz warmly welcomes attendees and reads the SVIVAH guidelines, which include “צלם אלוקים -respect the godliness of the others in the room,” “צימצום - embrace vulnerability,” and “קודש קודשים - honor the sanctity of this safe and secure space.” Participants are encouraged to come as they are – messy mascara, messy room, and messy thoughts included – to contribute however they are comfortable, and to stay for as long as they want. Guest educators teach, and Davis and/or Sperling offer words of Torah learning and conclusions before and after the guest speakers. Each educator weaves into her teaching an acknowledgement of life’s complexities, the challenges we face, and the power of “holding one another” (Mortkowitz).  All these elements coalesce to create a community of care.

Throughout each session, the SVIVAH leaders are highly active on the Zoom chat, sending a personal “So glad you joined us” message to each attendee, posting comments, and reacting to others’ contributions. This vibrant atmosphere leads participants to engage similarly, resulting in hundreds of chat comments and reactions of engagement and appreciation. Examples include: “I’m blown away,” “I loved the teaching,” “I’m taking the feeling that I’m NOT ALONE in this madness and stress!”  “This year the heartbreak feels so completely present, overwhelming. I am deeply grateful for you,” and “We’re all walking each other home.”

Grounding emotional-pastoral care in Torah

Just as Torah learning is enriched by emotional-pastoral insights, so too is emotional-pastoral care enriched by insights from the Torah.[5] Those in need of support often respond better when that support is rooted in spirituality, tradition, and community.[6] Centering emotional care around Torah resonates more powerfully because the care is anchored “in our traditions, and thus ourselves” (Benchimol). For example, in the Tisha B’Av workshop, which explored texts in the Book of Eichah referencing sexual violence, educator Tehilah Eisenstadt drew parallels between Jewish rituals of mourning – specifically, the ritual of sitting shiva – and new rituals we can use to support survivors of sexual violence. A participant wrote in the chat, “I love that you offered a ‘survivor shiva’[7] because it feels like something we KNOW how to do, at a time, and in the face of something we SO do not know how to handle.” Grounding the new ritual in a familiar one makes the former more accessible and impactful. This anecdotal response aligns with a recent Israeli study which demonstrated the positive impact on Jewish recovering addicts when they engaged as a community in Jewish culture and practice (Pagis et al., 2025).  Sperling explains that this integration of Torah into emotional care leads participants to realize that “the Torah is not transcendent, outside of myself, but that the Torah that is in the text is in me - with my own flesh I will see God.”

Seeing familiar Jewish traditions when creating a creating a caring community for Jews is especially needed because mainstream chaplaincy often has a Christian flavor.  Thomas-Newborn, president of Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains (NAJC), and a SVIVAH educator, explains that NAJC certification requires a high level of Torah expertise[8]because “we need to be intentional about using Jewish ideas.”  A study by two other NAJC-certified rabbis observes that clinical pastoral education is “heavily laden with Christian orientation and terminology,” so does not resonate with Jewish clients (Taylor & Zucker, 2002).  Studies across various faiths concur that there is a critical “need for culturally sensitive approaches in mental health care” (Kopparthi, 2025) that align with the participant’s spiritual needs. Integrating the traditions of Torah into mental health support enables Jewish participants to feel a sense of belonging within the supportive community.

According to Benchimol, connecting emotional care to our community's texts and traditions has an additional benefit of prompting an acknowledgment that these problems exist within our own community. This acknowledgment validates people’s experiences of harm, tasks the community with supporting the vulnerable, and pushes the community to alleviate systemic problems which have led to that harm. In this spirit, the Tisha B’Av workshop ended with participants creating a word wall to express support for survivors.  Showing her gratitude, one SVIVAH participant commented, “This is so appropriate to share pain and trauma during this time. All Jewish spaces can and should [acknowledge] this, should have steps toward real healing.”

Ultimately, a significant reason for grounding emotional care in Torah is Torah’s capacity – when taught with thoughtfulness and care – for spiritual healing. The power of this approach is illustrated by a client who told Benchimol that she had done many hours of therapy to deal with past abuse but “could never heal the spiritual part that was killed by the abuse” until she anchored her therapy in Torah.[9] Torah addresses our spirits and souls. As Mortkowitz described, “Torah is not an intellectual pursuit; it’s a life guide and soul compass.”

Conclusions and lessons for the field 

Torah teaching without emotional sensitivity can trigger discomfort and alienation for some, while emotional support without Torah content misses out on spiritual inspiration and community-building. SVIVAH has designed a distinct methodology for integrating Torah and pastoral-emotional care that can serve as a powerful model for other educators and organizations:

• Understand the value of integrating Torah teaching and emotional-pastoral care, and intend to cultivate it.
• Decide on an overarching thematic goal (rather than just a Torah topic) that aligns with creating a supportive community. 
• Recruit educators and consult mental health experts who can speak to this theme.
• Create a tentative workshop outline. Then hold a thoughtful pre-workshop meeting with the educators and the mental health experts to discuss the overarching theme, texts that might support it, emotions those texts might trigger, needs the learners will have, and methods for supporting learners through the workshop. Together, create the flow of the workshop. 
• During the workshop, ensure the learners feel warmly welcome and supported. This can be done through inclusive words of welcome, caring guidelines, personal messaging, teaching that is aware of its effects on the learners, language that acknowledges emotional needs, and prompting learner involvement. 
• Communicate before and after each workshop using language that similarly acknowledges the diversity and emotional needs of the community.

Together, these elements create a powerful community of care. The hundreds of learners who join each workshop, and their comments on the support, inclusivity, and inspiration they feel, attest to the community's thirst for this type of learning and the success of SVIVAH's methodology in nourishing it.

Even for organizations that are not structured like SVIVAH, elements of SVIVAH’s methodologies and sensitivities can elevate their practice.  As well, broader implementation could include deeper training in spiritual care for rabbinical school students, professional development offerings for rabbis and educators, and enhanced communication between chaplaincy and scholar-educator organizations.

Rabba Yaffa Epstein, a scholar and SVIVAH teacher, summarizes the connection between Torah and emotional care that SVIVAH has carefully cultivated: “People desperately need community and care, and the depth of Torah helps provide it, because Torah is meant to be about your soul.”

Personal Interviews

Benchimol, Dr. Guila, Senior Advisor at the SRE Network. Interview. September 25, 2024, and March 20, 2025.

Davis, Rabbanit Dalia, Director of Pastoral Education, SVIVAH. Interview. April 10, 2024, and March 5, 2025

Epstein, Rabba Yaffa, Senior Scholar and Educator-in-Residence at the Jewish Education Project. Interview. June 23, 2025.

Kalmonofsky, Dr. Amy. Blanche and Romie Shapiro Professor of Bible and Dean of List College and Kekst Graduate School, Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Interview. December 16, 2024.

Mortkowitz, Ariele, Founding Director, SVIVAH. Interview.  January 25, 2024, May 6, 2024, January 25, 2025, April 7, 2025, and April 30, 2025 and May 28, 2025.

Schiowitz, Shira, Teacher, mentor, and PD co-director at SAR High School. Interview. June 21, 2024.

Sperling, Rabbanit Aliza, Director of Education, SVIVAH. Interview. January 19, 2024, May 6, 2024, April 7, 2025, and April 30, 2025 and May 28, 2025.

Tanchel, Dr. Susie, Vice-President of Hebrew College. Interview. June 26, 2024.

Thomas Newborn, Rabbanit Alissa. President of Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains and Rabbanit at Netivot Shalom. Interview. June 18, 2025.

 HerTorah program observations

This article incorporates data from observing HerTorah workshops offered between April 2024 until May 2025.[10] The full list of SVIVAH’s workshops and each workshop’s educator bios can be found at svivah.org/gatherings.

References

Kopparthi, G. S. (2025). Rituals, religion, and recovery: Exploring the role of spirituality in mental health interventions. European Economics Letters, 15(1). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/390340036_Rituals_Religion_and_Recovery_Exploring_the_Role_of_Spirituality_in_Mental_Health_Interventions

Leung, J., & Li, K.-K. (2023). Faith-based spiritual intervention for persons with depression: Preliminary evidence from a pilot study. Healthcare, 11(15). https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare11152134

Levitz, Y. N., & Twerski, A. J. (Eds.). (2012). A practical guide to rabbinic counseling. Feldheim Publishers.

Miller, L. (2021). The Awakened Brain: The new science of spirituality and our quest for an inspired life. Random House.

Mortkowitz, A. and Sperling, A., (2022) SVIVAH full proposal cover sheet, Covenant signature grant, Covenant Foundation.

Mortkowitz, A. and Sperling, A., (2025) SVIVAH semi-annual report narrative, Covenant Foundation.

Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains. (2023). NAJC certification handbook. https://najc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/NAJC_Cert_HndBk_Jan2023.pdf

Nganyu, G. N. (2025). Pastoral care and Christian psychotherapy: Exploring the intersection of spiritual direction and mental health support in the local church. Global Journals. Retrieved from https://www.gjournals.org/2025/05/07/050625078-nganyu/

Pagis, M., Elbaz, A., & Ben Yair, Y. (2025). The different faces of religion in therapy: An exploratory qualitative study of a religion-based therapeutic community for addiction recovery in Israel. Journal of Religion and Health, 64(1), 64–81. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-024-02152-y

SVIVAH. (2021a). Gatherings. https://www.svivah.org/gatherings

SVIVAH. (2021b). HerTorah. https://www.svivah.org/hertorah

SVIVAH. (2021c). Home. https://www.svivah.org/

Taylor, R. B. E., & Zucker, R. D. J. (2002). Nearly everything we wish our non-Jewish supervisors had known about us as Jewish supervisees. Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling, 56(4), 327–338. https://doi.org/10.1177/154230500205600403

Ukpo, S. D., Imohiosen, C. E., Akello, J. O., & Ajuluchukwu, P. (2024). The impact of religious and spiritual counseling on mental health outcomes in geriatric care. International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Growth Evaluation, 5(6), 1538–1547. https://doi.org/10.54660/.IJMRGE.2024.5.5.1538-1547

West, W. (2000). Psychotherapy & spirituality: Crossing the line between therapy and religion. SAGE Publications.

Wonder & Repair. Projects. wonder-and-repair.square.site/projects

[1] This article is based on a study conducted by Dr. Judith Shapero on behalf of the Covenant Foundation. The study involved multiple in-depth interviews with SVIVAH founding Director Ariele Mortkowitz, HerTorah Director Rabbanit Aliza Sperling, and Director of Pastoral Education, Rabbanit Dalia Davis, as well as interviews with HerTorah teachers. A list of educators quoted in this article can be found in the ‘personal interviews’ section below. Data was also collecting through direct observation of eleven HerTorah classes and a review of relevant project files. I analyzed the data qualitatively in order to identify learnings worth sharing with the wider field.

[2] For a full list and more details about each of SVIVAH’s offerings, see Svivah.org/gatherings.

[3] A full list of SVIVAH educators and their bios can be found at svivah.org/gatherings.

[4] The lack of mental health training for rabbis has been recognized by many. For example, mental health professional Dr. Abraham J. Twersky writes that “traditional rabbinic training, while providing the rabbi with a wealth of knowledge from the rich heritage of Judaism, does not address many of the concepts that are essential for proper counselling” (Levitz & Twerski, 2012, preface).

[5] A similar phenomenon is observed in other faith communities. For example, Nganyu (2025) states that "The integration of pastoral care and Christian faith emerges as an essential paradigm for promoting holistic well-being.” See also William West’s argument for “crossing the line between therapy and religion” (2000).

[6] The impact of spiritual care on mental health of various populations has been examined in many studies, including Ukpo et al. (2024) which concludes that “religious and spiritual counseling has emerged as a significant intervention in geriatric mental health care, providing emotional support, resilience, and a sense of purpose.” See also Leung and Li (2023) whose study found that “faith-based spiritual intervention was effective in reducing depressive symptoms.”

[7] See wonder-and-repair.square.site/projects for more details about the ‘survivor shiva’ ritual created by Tehilah Eisenstadt.

[8] The NAJC Certification Handbook (2023) states that certification requires a candidate to demonstrate a “familiarity with and ability to integrate sacred Jewish texts and studies with chaplaincy practice.”

[9] See also psychologist Lisa Miller ‘s works on how spirituality helps us to move beyond “merely coping” to “transcend[ing]” (2021).

[10] The following pastorally infused HerTorah workshops were implemented from April 2024 until May 2025 and were observed as part of this study: April 3, 2024, Pesach HerTorah: The Redemptive Power of Speech (expanded on above) paired with April 9, 2024 Connective Conversations: Coming to the Table Across Difference • June 6, 2024, Shavuot HerTorah: ‘Show me the way:’ Guiding Others on the Journey of Life in the Book of Ruth and Today (expanded on above) paired with May 8, 2024 When Mother’s Day is Hard. • August 7, 2024, above). • October 21, 2024, HerTorah: A Time to Dance (expanded on above). • December 16, 2024, Chanukah HerTorah: Finding Light in the Dark. • March 11, 2025, Purim HerTorah: Stepping Up When It’s Hard • March 26, 2025, Freedom from Imposter Syndrome. • April 3, 2025, Passover HerTorah: What the Seder can Teach us about Living through difficult times. •May 7, 2025, When Mother’s Day is Hard: Circles of Support.

Dr. Judith Shapero is Director of Education at Temple Sinai Congregation of Toronto, as well as a leader and researcher who supports schools, universities, and foundations in enhancing their Jewish educational programs. She has taught Jewish Studies and teacher-training courses at York University and at JTS, has conducted research and evaluations for the Covenant Foundation, Micah Philanthropies, the Walder Foundation, and Rosov Consulting, and has won numerous awards for her teaching and scholarship.