Who We Are
Ofer Bashan
Psycho-Educational group facilitator. Plans and guides educational outdoors journeys. Imago-method couples therapist. Founder and director of Man's Steps- A Center for Male Awareness.
In the Past few years I am driven by my curiosity and passion for learning and developing. I've been passing through different worlds such as education, therapy, outdoor- work with teenagers and work with couples. Training in fields like therapeutic cards, playback, improvisation, focusing, photography, writing, photo-therapy, imagination, bare-walking and more construct my tool-box and leave me like a pack of play-dough - attentive to my surrounding and to the context of my meetings with people.
Dov Berkowitch
Rabbi Dov Berkowitch has been active for about thirty years in the field of educational and Jewish renewal in Israel. In his educational work and in his thinking based on Jewish sources he deals with existential issues on the personal and social level. The topics that occupy him most are related to socio-ethical and environmental matters, relationships within family and community frameworks and man's creativity.
About the Center
"Man's Steps" was founded from the passion to live life to its fullest, not to give up on any part of it.
We Believe:
That our life's inner work is inherent to our daily challenges.
We need not overcome them too quickly, or know how to solve them right away.
We are invited to listen to them for a moment, to breathe them, to experience them, and from their- to meet god.
We are starting to awaken.
We want something else but we don't know yet exactly what it is.
We need to teach ourselves to experience and feel ourselves.
The Center's Goal:
To be a home for meeting and enhancing creative powers and awareness- like a man meets the world through meeting with himself on different levels: body, sexuality, livelihood, needs, ownership, possessiveness, love, passion, devotion and realization.
The foundation of "Man's Steps"
Through reading Rabbi Dov Berkowich's book "She'Asani Gever- Talmud Be'Ein Ha'Seara" ("He who created me a s a Man"- Talmud in the Eye of the Storm), which describes a group learning process of 'Kidushin' Tractate, I contacted him and started studying with him- first in "Beit Av" in Jerusalem and then in a course in a leadership school I had established. This brought me later on to create a learning center that would study this specialized area- "The Temple of Life".
Seven years ago I founded "Man's Steps" together with Rabbie Dov Berkowich aiming to meet with groups of religious and secular men from all sectors of society.
Since then there are a number of active groups in different areas of Israel, every group having its own unique character. We hold workshops and seminars for educational teams, parents and teachers. We write and create and aim to expand male awareness in different parts of Israeli society.