Certain moments grab hold of you and demand attention. They are unpredictable, volatile, and magnetic. Once encountered, they are forever. But they are also ephemeral. This is "Mythic Time."
One wonders how the specious claims of the no-control gun advocates -- so filled with uncertainty and conjecture -- stands against the certainty of any human lives being saved. If this is a clash of simple values, then I choose life.
I don't know if God is aware of us, hears our prayers or answers them. As a teacher once told me when I asked if he believed in God, "I live in the tension between believing and not believing."
As a Jewish woman from New York, I could not be more appalled with the Bravo network's decision to air this train wreck of a show, and the cast members' decisions to fuel this stereotypical fire.
'Tis graduation season -- or for rabbinical school, ordination season -- and my family welcomes my sister-in-law Dahlia as the first female rabbi in our tree. So it's a tad jarring that the family member whom I want to talk to most says, and I quote, "It's against my religion."
We praise you, God, for providing a world in which the only true hierarchy begins with you and immediately ends, equally, with each one of us. In here, out there, everywhere.
On Shavuot night, thousands of Jews will place learning at the center of Jewish life, encountering texts and ideas late into the night, across Jewish practices and ideologies. What does it mean to take Jewish learning into the year?
We must raise interest and awareness of protecting the history of the Holocaust in order to protect the world. The Shoah Seder, which took place last Sunday, aims to do that.
My father had never apologized to me. I am certain that my grandfather had never apologized to my father. Was there some wise tradition of not apologizing that I was supposed to know?
Sometimes, being in the right place at the right time, whether by coincidence or not, can lead to macro change. I don't know what is going to happen at the Western Wall in the future, but the times they are certainly a-changing.
The Torah is not really a story for kids. Many sections of it are at least PG-13, if not R or even MA. But those stories, while complicated and open to various interpretation, regard sex and sexuality as part of a bigger picture including societal status, power dynamics, fidelity and purity.
When tragedy, illness and accidents occur, our worldview morphs immediately. Stability is shaken as reality turns upside down. The Omer says we must go slowly.
According to Jewish tradition, the upcoming festival of Shavuot is the anniversary of the giving of the Torah and the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Oddly though, we find no clear link in the Bible between the Shavuot festival and the giving of the Torah.
Bring your entire being to the service of God and your fellow creatures. Leave no part of yourself outside. Leave no piece of yourself invisible. Be passionate in the service you offer as rabbis.
"She's not white, she's Jewish." Sometimes I would like to say this about myself, but it is untrue. I am a proud Jew and a proud white person, but that's not so easy to say. Is there reason for white people to be proud of their race after this country's legacy of racism?
An old saying within the Israeli political establishment goes something like this: "You haven't made it in Israeli politics until you've been cursed by the Pulsa Dinura." The latest such threat is a conjuring-of-last-resort by those within the ultra-Orthodox community who feel sidelined.