Embodied Jewish Practices

Mitsui Collective : Featuring Yoshi Silverstein

How often in your life do you look at things through a Jewish lens? That’s how Yoshi Silverstein has lived his life from a young age. His career path has brought him to creating Mitsui Collective.
While attending the JPro Conference earlier this month, I had the opportunity to meet Yoshi Silverstein, founder of Mitsui Collective and this week’s guest in person. I attended a soulful morning minyan (prayer service) that he led in partnership with Kohenet Keshira HaLev Fife (See episode #43 here). I truly felt connected to G-d, community and myself during this moving service. That prayer experience was a powerful example of everything Yoshi teaches. I am honored to share my conversation with Yoshi.

About Mitsui Collective

Mission: Mitsui Collective builds resilient community through embodied Jewish practice and somatic antiracism.
Vision: Mitsui Collective brings the tools of embodied practice into the experience of Jewish life & learning through our bodies, and into the healing-centered work of addressing how our experiences of Judaism and Jewish community are impacted because of the bodies we are in. We seek to redefine the spaces and modalities through which Judaism prepares, supports, and nourishes both the individual and the collective for greater health, resiliency, and wellness in body and soul.
The need for spaces and practices that enable people to experience healing and wholeness in both body and soul has never been greater. Today, Jewish communities exist against a backdrop of ongoing racism and white supremacy, rising xenophobia, anti-semitism, the existential impact of climate change, and a pandemic that has often necessitated a “disembodied” Jewish practice experienced primarily on screen but in isolation. Within this setting, we increasingly see the need and desire for embodied Jewish learning and practices that help to strengthen our personal and collective connection to place, community, personal identity, ancestry and lineage for Jews of all racial backgrounds.
In a world shaped and dominated by over five centuries of racist ideology, we all have racialized identities. This culture is dense and opaque — but it can and must be transformed into a culture thick with the ability to heal and transform. Racism impacts all of us, and addressing racism and healing from its impacts is critical to transforming equitable and thriving Jewish spaces.
Mitsui Collective is open to all spiritual seekers while centering our work and community-building around those historically placed at the margins of Jewish life — including but not limited to Jews of Color and non-Ashkenormative Jews, LGBTQ, interfaith / intergroup families, and those of varied socioeconomic status. We view diversity and representation as a vital building block for vibrant, resilient community.

Communities of Practice

Creating vibrant and diverse communities of practice are core to Mitsui Collective’s long-term vision and ability to activate communities in the work of resiliency-building. Our aim is ultimately to center embodied Jewish practice and somatic antiracism as immersive and transformational foundations of contem