Today is December 7, 2024 /
Today is December 7, 2024 /
Last week was hard. It was raw and messy, replete with mediocre parenting, a sense of working harder than ever before, and an awareness that we – and those we love – were treading water at best. This week was hard. Wants morphed into needs, the shiny potentialities presented by COVID-19 became tarnished, and respite Continue Reading »
My kids are home. Even an adult child I thought would never live at home again is home. Yesterday, we spent 8 hours in the house, each of us in zoom meetings on 4 different devices, unable to say a word to each other let alone bake a cake—all in the name of staying connected. Continue Reading »
It’s a time for harmonic vibrations. We need to model optimism, hope, and love. We’ll leave the panic and fear to those who want to instill panic and fear. There are those who believe that people will listen to them better if they raise their voices and shriek. We are not shriekers. We embrace the Continue Reading »
One of my favorite teachings on Hanukkah comes from Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Barditshov, known as the Kedushas Levi. Here is a very abridged version. Unlike the Exodus from Egypt, which God in His great mercy performed without arousal from below, in the case of Hanukkah there was some help from below, in that the Continue Reading »
I’ve always loved the 49-day countdown (count-Up, really) to Shavuot. The building anticipation towards Matan Torah, eagerly breathing in the blooms adorning homes and synagogues, Yom Tov tastebuds rewarded with blintzes and cheesecake, staying up ‘til first light awaiting the arrival of the Torah. Up until this year, the CountUp has reminded me of the Continue Reading »
For almost 20 years, I’ve been taken by the idea that the Haggadah is constructed as the movement from silence to words to song – the enactment of freedom through the very modality through which we express it. Meaning, at the beginning of the Haggadah, there are no stories, no tales, no history lessons. There Continue Reading »
In Southern California, over the course of a few days in March, anyone walking — or standing, or driving, or looking out the window — at almost any time of day was treated to a remarkable sight. Flying through the air were thousands upon thousands of butterflies. The creatures — orange and black Painted Lady Continue Reading »
Megillat Esther is about hiding in plain sight. Hadassah becomes Esther — “I will hide” — hiding her true self until the dramatic scene in chapter 7, in which she also unmasks the villain who has been hiding in plain sight all along, right under the king’s nose. The masks we wear on Purim and Continue Reading »
Jonathan Haidt’s books have been stirring my soul, both his latest book, The Coddling of the American Mind. How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, and his previous one, The Righteous Person. It is remarkable to me how on the one hand he can write such provocative and powerful Continue Reading »
