Sukkot is, without question, the most embodied of Jewish festivals. Yes, we light candles throughout the year, smell sweet spices, bow and bend in prayer, taste sweet things or varied fruits and nuts, and – how could we forget – hear or sound the blasts of shofar. So we are not without sensory experiences in […]
There are so many features of the High Holiday, including themes, that resonate or overlap with our “other” civilization. In Reconstructionist-speak, drawing from the work of Rabbi Mordecai M. Kaplan, we live in two civilizations, our civic and Jewish cultures. So while there is no secular new year in September, it is a time when […]
This is a moment when finding the words is hard. Which word first, which heart chamber is pumping what emotion, and in what mode. This is a moment both unprecedented and in continuity with the epic, existential, ongoing battle in the state of Israel that to some is and will always be Palestine. (I know, […]
These things are possible. One. It is possible to sustain a synagogue community where every member has a home, and no one is subject to a “tzitzis check.” Translation: no one’s beliefs or non-beliefs are examined to see whether or not they are kosher! There are plenty of synagogues where dissenting views – on God, […]
For many of my waking hours, and for too many hours that should not be waking hours, I ponder this: what do folks want their rabbi to be saying right now? I know what I would prefer to be offering: creative and uplifting visions about the Passover seder; creative and uplifting invitations to count the […]
Here: the memes proliferate, the slogans fly, the protests surge. There: the suffering mounts, intolerably. Here, in our non-war torn lives, it’s hard to know how much to tap into the enduring torment that prevails over there – amongst those struggling to survive in Gaza, or those waiting for their loved ones taken hostage on […]
We know what we are celebrating this week, through the weekend, and into next week – that perennially less-important-yet-most-highly-vaunted festival on the Jewish calendar, the Festival of Lights. No matter how it is spelled in English, Hanukkah always falls on the 25th of the Jewish month of Kislev, and therefore near to and sometimes overlapping […]
These days, it is hard to know where to start, or what to focus on, when I write to you. Perhaps it is because my focus is constantly being pulled towards the prevailing Israel/Gaza crisis and its impact. Yet even in writing these words I know and understand that just the phrase “prevailing crisis,” without […]
Words. They are usually my friend. They bless me with their familiarity and function. Now, they are elusive. I rely on words to carry not just thoughts, but insight. I feel bereft of insight, and so am leery of words. And yet. We need still to gather them up, to fill our baskets of bereavement, […]
As far as I know, Robin never said this on an episode of the delightfully campy television series of my childhood. Their masks were decidedly prosaic and chunky, the effects and the “dramatic action” hilarious. Nothing sacred about them! In any version of the Batman artistic oeuvre, how or why they ever unmasked wouldn’t be […]
