Rabbi Brian Yosef Schachter-Brooks

Rabbi Brian Yosef Schachter-Brooks is a Jewish meditation teacher, rabbi and musician living in Tucson, Arizona. He grew up in a largely secular household but was drawn to Judaism as a boy, and went on to qualify as a teacher of Jewish meditation under Rabbi Avram Davis in 2004. Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi later named him a Minister of Sacred Music, and in 2023 he was ordained as a rabbi in the Jewish Renewal lineage by a circle of rabbis in Ashland, Oregon. He also studied music at the Eastman School and has been teaching Judaism and its contemplative side to young people and adults since 2000.

In 2016, while living in Costa Rica, he started Torah of Awakening, an online community built around what he calls Integral Jewish Meditation. It draws on Kabbalah, Hasidic teaching and the Hebrew letters to guide students towards a direct sense of presence beneath thought and feeling. Members meditate with him live on Zoom several days a week, and a year-long programme, The Art of Judaism, trains adults to lead prayer and meditation themselves. In Tucson he leads Shabbat mornings at Congregation Bet Shalom, and he travels to Berkeley for musical Shabbat and High Holy Day services. He wrote Kabbalah for Beginners and Integral Jewish Meditation, and officiates weddings with his wife, Lisa.