Madrichim
madrich מדריך (madreekh) noun male / madrichah מדריכה (madreekhah) noun female /madrichim מדריכים (madreekheem) plural: Guide; teacher; trainer; educator; group leader; va’ad facilitator
All CCM classes are taught by trained, certified madrichim, who have gone through our four-year program, followed by a year of Teacher Training. All madrichim receive continued supervision from our most experienced staff members.
Meet our madrichim —
Rabbi Joshua Boettiger is the spiritual leader of Temple Emek Shalom in Ashland, OR, and Associate Rosh Yeshiva of CCM. He is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, and is a Rabbis Without Borders Fellow. Rabbi Boettiger directs the Mussar program in Ashland, and also teaches Jewish meditation on a weekly basis and leads silent retreats.
Carol Daniels has studied and practiced Mussar since 2006. She began teaching Mussar in 2011. Her life work has been devoted in helping people understand and express themselves through the use of art, movement, yoga, meditation and breathwork. Carol is particularly interested in the integration of these modalities into a daily Mussar practice. She has extended her Mussar learning into the development of Wise Aging programs with Sara Freeman at Kol Tzedek and Rabbi Shelly Bar Nathan at Or Zarua synagogues in the Philadelphian area. Carol was a founding member of the Center for Contemporary Mussar and served as its first secretary. She is now a member at large on its board.
Elana Eisner has been with CCM for almost a decade. She is a certified Madrichah, psychotherapist and Jungian Psychoanalyst in private practice; she also teaches Analytic Candidates at the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles. Elana is married with five grown children and six wonderful grandchildren.
Marty Towbin retired from a fulfilling career in medicine in 2015. Through Mussar study and practice, he has found a way to nurture his growing love for Judaism and to live and share its beautiful precepts more fully. He has found Mussar to be an evolving touchstone, offering many gifts for personal and collective growth as we continue to learn to care for each other in our challenging world. In 2021, he was ordained as a Maggid from the lineage of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (z’il) and has merged his Mussar learning into original adaptations of Jewish folk tales and Torah commentary.
In Memoriam
Linda Kriger studied and practiced Mussar since 2007 and was the founding Chair of CCM. She is a graduate of Connecticut College and the Columbia University School of Journalism. She was a reporter for the Providence Journal (RI) and a medical writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Subsequently, she was a producer with a theater company that produced plays by women about women. She published Gut Feelings: Social and Emotional Struggles with Crohn’s & Colitis, for which she interviewed more than a hundred patients, family members and significant others to discover how people live with the shame and isolation of a disease that can be so difficult to talk about.