February 19, 2019
Creating a Spectacular Mishkan
Shabbat Shalom, Chaverim— Fair warning: this is going to be a Biblically-inspired pitch! Following another long description of what will be needed to create a spectacular mishkan, or community ritual space, this week’s Torah portion,...
February 06, 2019
Make for Me a Sacred Place
Terumah 2019 I dedicate this Musing to the memory of our friend, teacher, and Chochmat HaLev member, Shaykh Dr. Ibrahim Baba Farajeje Shalom Chaverim— Julie and I just are back from a whirlwind trip to...
January 16, 2019
Where is our strength hiding?
Shalom Chaverim— This week’s Torah portion, Beshallach (Exodus 13:17-17:16) includes perhaps the most well known and dramatic moments of all biblical narratives—the parting of the Sea of Reeds. The moment is supremely anxious: the fleeing...
January 09, 2019
Delicious and devastating life on Earth
Shalom Chaverim— This week’s parasha, Bo (Exodus 10:10-13:16), closes out the famous Ten Plagues episode, which leads us to the liberation of the Israelites from slavery. The final plague, “Death of the Egyptians’ Firstborn,” saturates...
January 02, 2019
Lost from our own hearts
Shalom, Chaverim— We are in plague-land, my friends. Parashat Va’eira (Exodus 6:2-9:35) focuses almost exclusively on the first seven of the ten plagues: Blood, Frogs, Lice, Wild Animals, Cattle Disease, Boils, and Hail. The text...
December 26, 2018
The Jewish Superpower
Shalom Chaverim— This week’s Torah portion, Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1), launches us into a new reality (biblically) and a new year (in reality). Our reading sets into motion the series of fortunate and unfortunate events that...
December 19, 2018
Endings and beginnings, blessings and mixed blessings.
Shalom Chaverim— This week’s parasha, Vayechi (Genesis 47:28-50:26), is about endings and beginnings, blessings and mixed blessings, fathers and sons. It depicts the end-of-life stories of Jacob/Israel and Joseph; it closes out Genesis, the first...
December 13, 2018
Elevated responses to conflict: a parable on healing
Shalom Friends, This week’s parasha, Vayigash (Genesis 44:18 - 47:27), brings the Joseph story to an emotional climax. To recap: Joseph, the beloved older son of the ill-fated Rachel, was despised by his jealous half-brothers—...
November 29, 2018
Gam zu l’tovah — even-this-is-for-the-good
Shabbat Shalom Chaverim— The teaching gam zu l’tovah/even-this-is-for-the-good emphasizes that there are things in the world that are nistar/hidden and nigleh/revealed. Often, we are experiencing something in its nistar state, passing judgment on it, and...
November 16, 2018
Everything cocooned must transform and emerge.
Shabbat Shalom Chaverim— This week’s Torah portion, Va’yeitzei (Genesis 28:10-32:3), follows Jacob on his journey away from home and hearth, and into his life as an independent adult. On the first night, he finds himself...
November 09, 2018
Standing at the Crossroads
Shabbat Shalom Chaverim— This week’s Torah portion, Toledot (Genesis 25:19-28:9) begins with another of our Jewish ancestors’ struggles with fertility. But finally, after pleading with God, Isaac and Rebecca do conceive—with twins. “And the children...
November 01, 2018
We Want to Know Why
“And the life of Sarah was a hundred and seven and twenty years: these were the years of Sarah’s life. And Sarah died in the-city-of-four-corners, also called Hebron, in the land of Canaan and Abraham...
October 26, 2018
The genderqueerness of our sacred forebears.
Genesis 18:1-22:24 Shabbat Shalom Chaverim— This week’s Torah portion includes the Akeida, the “Binding” of Isaac. Here’s the basic set up: Abraham and Sarah have been on a spiritual quest with their family and posse....
October 19, 2018
The potential for the future contained in the present.
Shabbat Shalom, Chaverim— I love learning Talmud. I really do. I love its weird and floaty logic, its flights of fancy and its insistence on facing life’s messiest moments without shirking. I delight at the...
October 12, 2018
Turn Our Mourning Into Dancing
Shabbat Shalom Chaverim, This week’s Torah portion, Noach (Genesis 6:9 - 11:32) is focused on the mythic account of a massive, worldwide, completely devastating flood. What makes this flood particularly terrible, aside from its widespread...
October 04, 2018
Jhos’ Yom Kippur Drash
Gut Yontiff. Jewish Tradition teaches that there are 50 gates of understanding. The first 49 are opened by our intellectual questioning and inquiry. But the 50th—the gate of heaven—requires a unique key: your heart. Ten...
October 02, 2018
Laura Goldman’s Yom Kippur Drash
This drash was written and delivered by Laura Goldman on Yom Kippur 5779. Good Yontif. You and I come to services on Yom Kippur for so many reasons, and all of them are good ones....
October 02, 2018
Jhos’ Rosh Hashanah Drash
Tonight begins the Yamim Noraim, the Days of Awe, when people all over the world gather to engage Judaism’s wisdom tradition of Tshuvah, which, while it has no parallel English concept, is often translated as...
September 28, 2018
Celebrating abundance, preparing for scarcity
Shabbat Shalom Chaverim, Wow, I’m still bobbling around in the afterglow of the Days of Awe, stumbling in and out of random sukkot, and my olfactory nerves are pulsing with etrog’s intoxicating perfume. Tis the...
September 14, 2018
Shedding the weight of our habits
Shabbat Shalom, Chaverim— It’s Shabbat Shuva this week, the Shabbat of turning, the first Shabbat of the new year, the Shabbat of facing, making, and accepting change. This time of year is set aside to...