How to Change? Making the Most of Elul and Tishrei with Dr Tamra Wright

We all know that Elul and the Yamim Noraim are a time for reflection and personal growth. But how many of us have the tools to actually make lasting changes?

Research shows that about 80% of people who try to change a behaviour give up within two years. That's not because we lack willpower. It's because willpower is the wrong tool for the job.

In this session, Dr Tamra Wright will share practical, evidence-based approaches to behaviour change, grounded in both contemporary psychology and Jewish thought. You'll learn:

• Why one classic approach to mussar may actually work against us, and what works better
• How to recognise the mental patterns that sabotage our best efforts at change
• A simple, proven method for building new habits that stick

Whether you're hoping to deepen your davening, strengthen a relationship, improve your health, or work on any middah (virtue), this session will give you concrete tools you can start using straight away, with the most powerful season of the Jewish year as your runway.

After the session, you'll have the option of registering for free email-based habit coaching with Tamra to help you create positive new habits between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

This shiur is dedicated to the memory of Yocheved Hillman, Dalia Hillman and Chazzan Hillman z'l.

Dr. Tamra Wright brings an unusual combination of skills to coaching and leadership development. Her academic background in philosophy enables her to think deeply and critically about leadership challenges and proposed solutions, and she draws on decades of experience teaching, coaching, and mentoring hundreds of leaders and educators from different faith communities. She is a certified Tiny Habits Coach and a Mental Fitness Coach, and serves as Curriculum Development Advisor at Faith in Leadership.

Tamra is an academic specialising in continental philosophy and 20th-century Jewish philosophy. She is the author of The Twilight of Jewish Philosophy: Emmanuel Levinas’s Ethical Hermeneutics (1999), and co-editor of Face to Face with Animals: Levinas and the Animal Question (2019) and Radical Responsibility: Celebrating the Thought of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (2012). She has published numerous articles on contemporary Jewish thought and, more recently, on Judaism and Positive Psychology. She is the co-author of an article entitled "Radical Resilience: Hope, Agency, and Community in the Thought of Rabbi Sacks", published in Tradition in 2025. Her article "Serve God with Joy (and Self-Actualization): Positive Psychology and the Thought of Rabbi Sacks" is included in An Ode to Joy: Judaism and Happiness in the Thought of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Beyond, edited by Erica Brown and Shira Weiss (2024). Her recent work explores Rabbi Sacks's call for a new approach to mussar, bringing Jewish ethical tradition into conversation with contemporary behavioural science.