What Children Can Teach Us at Rosh HaShanah
A deep spiritual life is hard to find. While opportunities abound for spiritual connections (yoga, meditation, retreats and the like), for most of us it doesn’t come easy.
Dancing in the Palm of God’s Hand
I can't seem to find a starting place in writing my reflections of Rosh HaShanah. It has become a tangled ball of string, and I’m not able to coax out a single strand. I thought about starting at the end. I could, but I don't know what that is either.
The Nudge of Selichot
After 10 weeks of swimming, biking, walking at the ocean's edge, and rationalizing that it's too hot for tennis, Saturday night Selichot services appear on my calendar as the call back from the freedom of su
Beyond Bokser: 11 Ways to Go Green on Tu BiShvat and Year-Round
Years ago, on a cold and sparkly winter afternoon, I sat with my younger sister in the living room, both of us savoring the long, dark pods of chewy bokser we had saved from our Tu BiShvat celebration at Religious Scho
Why Our Synagogue Switched to Solar Power
Doing the right thing paid off at the bottom line. How often can you say that about doing a mitzvah?
It’s Hard to be a Jew at Christmas, But Even Harder on Tu BiSh’vat
It is a truth universally acknowledged that it can be difficult to be Jewish at Christmas time. It has seeped into North American cultural consciousness so thoroughly that South Park even wrote a song about it, complete with trademark expletives.
Making Soup, Making Shabbat
When I was a kid, my family did not keep kosher. The closest we got was the story my mother told about how, when she was growing up, her father once yelled at her as she poured a glass of milk to go with her BLT sandwich: “We don’t mix milk and meat!”
The Elul Mitzvah Challenge: Join In!
In Pirkei Avot, the rabbis wrote, “Mitzvah goreret mitzvah, averah goreret averah,” one mitzvah (commandment/good deed) leads to another mitzvah, and one transgression leads to another transgression.
On the Way to an Answer: A Poem for the Shofar
Do not text me;
I will not notice,
And may ignore it
anyway.
How can one hundred and forty of
anything
compel me
to answer,
unless I merely seek
distraction
and not return?
Do not leave a message
that I will not listen to
The (Circle) Spiral of Jewish Life
We often think about the cycle of the year-the change of the air in the fall, or the blossoming of new life in the spring-and we see a circle.