ISJL Southern & Jewish 2026

A healthy classroom starts with a healthy you. In this interactive session, we’ll explore simple, practical ways to weave self-care practices into the rhythm of your teaching and your life, for both you and your students. Discover strategies to reduce stress, build emotional resilience, and create a classroom culture where everyone can thrive.

What makes people feel like they belong—and what quietly pushes them away? Let’s use data to go beyond the buzzword of “belonging” and determine what helps people connect, engage, and stay involved. Blending research with real-life experience, we’ll explore key ingredients to shape environments where people know they are essential within a group. Participants will gain practical strategies to create spaces in their local communities where people of all ages don’t just show up—but feel truly vital to communal Jewish life.

Talking about death not only better prepares us to approach life’s most challenging moments, but also helps us articulate and affirm who we are and what we ultimately care about. Created by rabbis, theologians, wellness, and palliative care experts, Death Over Dinner (or Donuts): Jewish Edition provides a unique lens through which to build and strengthen our personal beliefs about life and death. Join this brave, healing space to talk about how we choose to live our lives, recognizing that they are finite. This structured conversation will be facilitated in small groups with plenty of opportunity for reflection and conversation. We’ll also provide an overview of how to lead such conversations yourself, along with the tools needed for you to host a future gathering of your own. 

A skilled teller and teacher, Marilyn Price will help you tell incredible stories to all audiences, of all ages, in your own way and with your own style. In this session, Marilyn will give beginner storytellers some basic skills, ideas, and a heap of encouragement as they start their storytelling journeys. Marilyn’s approach can also help experienced storytellers level up their abilities. Your words are important, and with Marilyn’s help, the way you share them can be magical and memorable.

For most of Jewish history, Torah was studied by people who spent their days making things: farmers, tailors, carpenters, merchants, builders, cooks, and artisans. 

The ISJL's 2026 A. Mitchell and Morrise Meyer Bell Rabbinical Intern, Rachel Sturges, is not only a current rabbinical student but also a former instrument builder. She will share insights into Torah visible only when we try to make something ourselves. 

What does it mean that the Torah's first image of G-d is not king, judge, or warrior, but Creator? Why is the first person explicitly filled with the spirit of G-d not a prophet, but the artisan Bezalel? What can craftsmanship teach us about humility, creativity, failure, and repair? Drawing on Torah, Jewish thought, and personal experience at the workbench, this interactive session invites participants to explore a surprising idea: making things is not merely practical work: it is one of Judaism's deepest spiritual disciplines. No woodworking experience required. If you've ever raised a child, cooked a meal, taught a class, planted a garden, built a community, or tried to repair something broken, this conversation is for you.