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Return.
Again.
I have returned again
to this place of
Fullness,
this place of everythingness;
and I feel empty.
Hollow.
Again.
I fling my sins,
all bright copper
and colored feathers,
out into the heavens -
Which is separate from the earth,
Which is separate

Vayeilech is the shortest portion in the Torah - just one chapter consisting of 30 verses. But it includes an important commandment, part of which is included at the beginning of the Torah service in Mishkan T'filah, the Reform Movement's siddur.

In most ways, my observance of Yom Kippur won’t be much different than thousands of other Jews in pews across North America.

We’ll fast.

We’ll pray.

We’ll browse.

Wait, what was that last thing?

We’ll browse?

Indeed. 

Every Yom Kippur since 2007, my dad

Jewish law says we are to fast on Yom Kippur. This is based on the biblical law that on the Day of Atonement, “You shall afflict yourselves” (Lev. 23:27), which was interpreted as early as the return from the Babylonian exile as “fasting” (e.g., Isa. 58: 3)

Chocolate smooths transitions. As we move from summer to fall – vacation to school, Elul to Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur to Sukkot – we might extract historical wisdom from chocolate.

Everywhere I look, I am surrounded by apologia.

A professional football player cold-cocks his wife in an elevator and drags her unconscious body down a hotel hallway. He issues an apology, yet it is clear that he is sorry only that he was captured on video. A

When in Jerusalem, I try to tap into both its earthly and ethereal realms – the Jerusalem below (Yerushalayim lamata) and the Jerusalem above (Yerushalayim lamala).

The Jerusalem below is a noisy modern metropolis, where six days a week, people rush about in

Two rabbis, a Methodist theologian, and a synagogue’s brotherhood president walk into a national social action event…

Yes, it sounds like the beginning of a joke, but there is no punchline.

There are, however, several goals associated with America’s Journey