What happens when 30 Jews attempt to stay silent for two days? I was about to find out.

But my worry was more that I might spend the entire weekend as a tearful, lonely mess. Still in the Shnat Ha-Evel period of mourning, I am prone to bursting into tears out of nowhere, rather like a burst watermain – particularly when spending quiet time deep in my own thoughts or when at shul connecting with prayer and the choral voices of my community.

To steady my nerves, I arranged to meet a friend who lives near the retreat centre prior to the event. Over coffee, we pored over the itinerary with curiosity: mindfulness-focused activities scheduled from 7am until 10pm. And as she delivered me to the centre, catching sight of the imposing carvings of birds guarding the vast gate of the centuries-old building, with a concerned face she whispered into my ear, “Call me any time and I’ll rescue you.”

But no rescue was needed. We were gently eased into our new space by those running the retreat before the silence was ushered in. What is more, the silence was purely social. No, you could not ask other retreat-goers to pass the salt at dinner time, for example, but there were prayers and singing during the Friday night and Shacharit services, benching after meals and chants sung in Hebrew and English.

There was also movement meditation, yoga sessions, a five rhythms class, Q&A sessions and a small-group discussion where you could air anything confidentially.

We sat for several meditation sessions a day, guided in practice by the teachers, Rebecca Schisler who had travelled from America where she works for the Institute of Jewish Spirituality (IJS) and Brighton-based Miri Cohen. Long preceding HaMakom, IJS was set up in 1999 to teach traditional and contemporary Jewish spiritual practices that cultivate mindfulness.

Taking the theme of Embracing the Luminosity of the Dark, Schisler’s teaching was as illuminating as it was healing. One important observation – put into beautiful practice on the weekend – was how Judaism provides the perfect mindfulness practice in the form of Shabbat, and that it is quite possible to fuse meditation into daily life including the brachahs.

Miri Cohen[Missing Credit]

We were guided in heart meditation, which involved focusing awareness on the chest area to foster loving kindness and compassion, and create emotional wellbeing, by using breath awareness and visualisation, and sending positive wishes to yourself and others. In Buddhism this practice is closely linked to the cultivation of a quality called Metta. Some Jewish meditation teachers align Metta with Chesed, meaning grace, compassion and benevolence. At HaMakom these sessions to generate kindness and love come under the umbrella of Blessing Practice.

In Cohen’s heart practice session, she asked us to consider, “What do you need right now?” We were encouraged to visualise the heart as a salt crystal as waves lapped at it. “It's a beautiful way of gently and respectfully approaching our protection systems – the barriers that we all put up to protect ourselves,” she explains after the retreat. “This can be a way to soften and help us.”

And without wanting to sound too woo-woo, it was during this session in which I felt a powerful sense of love for everybody (most of whom were total strangers) in the meditation hall. It felt like being bathed in a golden glow of benevolence. It is a long time since I have practised meditation – I used to practise as a teenager to help relieve the pressure of exams – and Cohen says, “I think that, to me, says you've got a natural connection with that particular practice.” She advises me to build on it.

Cohen herself started practicing 25 years ago in Buddhist environments “because that's all there was”. Then she stumbled upon HaMakom ten years ago. “It was such a revelation, because it meant I could practice this thing that had changed my life so much for the better in a Jewish environment, which was absolutely life changing.”

She trained to be a teacher about four years ago, and what she has observed is the practice’s life-changing qualities particularly for beginners joining her classes.

“Often, they never allow the mind to slow down, and when it does slow down, it's so much easier to see the patterns and the way all our minds go round and round, and the natural human negative bias which takes us in the direction of the difficult stuff. Every person experiences pain and hardship, but can we have a choice over our reactions to that? I've seen people who were quite stuck get unstuck. There's some liberation in our daily lives.”

She also says that it is not about just sitting on the meditation cushion and then forgetting all about it afterwards; when one has practised for a while it permeates daily life.

“It can help one to stand back a little. You might think, ‘somebody I love is sick and it's awful’, but it gives us choices in how to respond. That knee jerk response can sometimes cause us more pain.”

That is not to say I avoided challenging moments on the retreat. My first observation – after two hours of doing very little – was sheer exhaustion. Often it can take the first few days of a holiday to feel properly rested, once the cortisol has drained from your body. This was that, but sped up to such a degree I felt like I’d ingested a sleeping pill. Cohen kindly explained that the tiredness had no doubt been there all along; I’d just been too busy to notice.

At some point on Saturday, I felt acute longing for my family and the lively chatter and cuddles of my children. I was ready to return home. And there were more challenges. During chanting, particularly “love and compassion, kindness and peace” and “loving one’s neighbour as oneself” – chants that you repeat to fully absorb the message – I felt the tears spring up and roll silently down my cheeks and onto the cushion on which I sat. Perhaps I was overwhelmed by those messages, or was it the emotion of the past months being unleashed?

While in normal society we might offer a well-meaning hug or words of reassurance to someone who is upset, on retreat we are requested to keep our distance, to give each person space to process their own emotions. Although, all participants are encouraged to approach teachers if they need support, and Schisler and Cohen are trained and experienced in this role.

It was a relief to let that emotion run free then escape to the lush gardens outside to inhale some deep breaths of fresh air, before returning, refreshed and maybe even lighter for the next session.

In another session, a revelation arose. While welcome in providing some new clarity, it threw things into chaos as I snapped out of my meditative state, eager to implement life changes. But being on retreat is not the right time to solve all your life problems and teachers recommend waiting a while before making big decisions.

One retreat attendee who has been with HaMakom since its early days is Roland Brandman. As well as being the chairman of HaMakom, Brandman is the founder of the International Symposium on Jewish Meditation, and author of the anthologies Sapphire Light: Select Gems of Spiritual Wisdom and Sapphire Mind: Liberation in Jewish Meditation.

Brandman’s Jewish religious practice had lapsed during his time at university, and after graduating he started meditating and reading into mystical/contemplative philosophy. He was not aware of any connection with Judaism until he attended Limmud for the first time in 2010 and met a group of Jews who were just as passionate as him about discussing and practising meditation.

One of these was Rabbi Danny Newman, who had started what an informal network for meditation discussion and practice called HaMakom. The charity as we now know it was founded in 2011 by Rabbi Newman who saw a lack of a space for Jews who wanted to connect deeply on a spiritual level, and to provide a platform for meditation within a Jewish context. That same year, Brandman was invited to attend the first ever residential Jewish meditation retreat in the UK.

Taking a break[Missing Credit]

“HaMakom and a network of Jewish meditators enabled me to see a possible home for myself back again in Judaism and provided me direction and continuing support for my spiritual journey,” says Brandman.

“HaMakom has provided for so many others a Jewish context in which they can practice meditation and improve and elevate their relationship within themselves, the world and Judaism. I know many Jews who looked outside Judaism for the spiritual wisdom, wellbeing and awakening they sought; they didn't know that Judaism has all the richness that they needed.”

He stresses that while mindfulness tends to dominate the airwaves of meditation culture in the West, we need to cast our nets wider. “Spiritual practice and personal development require a lot more than doing only mindfulness, and in the Jewish tradition we are blessed to have such breadth and depth of practices and texts to realise this end.”

While practices and texts in different traditions offer similar things, Judaism offers practices and texts “with their own unique flavours, approaches and context”. Brandman would like to see them better known around the Jewish and non-Jewish world, “given that as far as I am aware the research still tends to show that when people think of contemplative religious traditions, Judaism doesn't tend to spring to their minds”.

HaMakom now runs three meditation retreats a year: this winter one, a three-day iteration in May, and a five-day retreat in summer. There are plans to host one-day retreats this year. The charity also offers 45-minute online weekly sitting groups in the morning and evening, with 15 minutes of sharing at the end, and an opportunity to say Kaddish.

“We've touched thousands of people,” says HaMakom trustee Sara Bensusan. “To be helping to provide a space which is providing comfort, support and transformation for people – and I see the profound effect it has – is incredibly meaningful.”

Bensusan started helping to run the retreats ten years ago and was hooked. “Hamakom introduced me to a powerful, meaningful practice – both in the meditation and the chanting. It's given me permission to slow down and pause in how I live my daily life.”

While she had come across chanting before, this was a new space where she could experience it and not need to “compromise” her Judaism. “I could connect in a meaningful, spiritual way to the world in a community which is Jewish. It adds a hugely important depth to how I live my life Jewishly, and on the retreats I've grown to appreciate the power of building community in social silence. It’s connecting with people on another level.”

I can only agree. By the end, it felt like I knew the people in the room, strangers with whom I had not even chatted, and felt the urge to bottle that feeling of kindliness towards my fellow human beings and bring it back to London, and to the morning commute. It was, as Bensusan puts it, “kind of magical and alchemical”.

And, most unexpected of all, I even started to wonder when I might come back on retreat.

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