Longform

Take the Long Way: Parashat Beshalach
Inspiring Story, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Weekly Parsha |
February 02, 2023

Take the Long Way: Parashat Beshalach

In my family, we have the concept of the “Stanton shortcut.” It pertains to an unnecessarily long path that my father, my brother, or I take when going from one place to another, leading to wonderful adventures or learning opportunities – and a far longer duration of travel than any of us anticipated at the outset. We’ve taken some wonderful “shortcuts” all over the world, using many different modes of transportation, and we continue to revel in the time we wound up spending together en route. Evidently, this is far from an......

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Joshua Stanton
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"Birah Doleket"
Breaking False Dichotomies, Daily Life, Hold Dualities Together, Inspiring Story, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized, Weekly Parsha, Wisdom Warehouse |
November 11, 2022

“Birah Doleket”

Monday night, I saw Ani DiFranco in concert. For those of you who don’t have lyrics from “If He Tries Anything” as your yearbook quote, she’s a folk rock singer-songwriter whose powerful lyrics about feminism, abortion rights, and fighting oppression have buoyed many Gen X and elder Millennial feminists. She was like a beloved older cousin who taught me that being fierce, feminist, and angry were a-okay – and, in fact, that anger was an appropriate response to the world around me. The last time I saw her live was in 2004......

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Rabbi Julia Appel
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Freedom to Give
Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Compassion and Empathy, Longform, Longform, Mundane Into Sacred |
February 04, 2022

Freedom to Give

“A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship. A contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. That is why contracts benefit, but covenants transform.“ In these terse words of enduring wisdom, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks draws our attention to the covenants we might long have overlooked and the contracts that we mistook for something more (see Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times for additional wisdom). Such was certainly the case for the Israelites, as becomes evident in this week’s Torah portion, T’rumah (Exodus 25:1 – 27:19). It......

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Joshua Stanton
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The Plague of Uncertainty
Another Way Of Looking At Things, Compassion and Empathy, Longform, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
January 07, 2022

The Plague of Uncertainty

Throughout Moses’ showdown with Pharaoh, there is one overarching, emotional plague that God wreaks upon the Egyptians: uncertainty. They do not know when the litany of discomforts, outrages, upsets, frustrations, pains, and fears will end. We gain insight into the Egyptian mindset just after Moses pronounces that God will bring locusts to eat whatever remains of the crops after the hail. Moses departs Pharaoh’s court and then we read (Exodus 10:7): “Pharaoh’s courtiers said to him, ‘How long shall this one be a snare to us? Let the people go to worship......

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Joshua Stanton
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Have We Stopped Dreaming?
Hold Dualities Together, Longform, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
December 03, 2021

Have We Stopped Dreaming?

In times of prolonged pain, be it emotional or physical, our world constricts and perspectives contract. We focus on the moment-to-moment or the day-to-day. Right now, this describes many of us. The waves of pandemic (and waves of variants) evoke waves of trauma that we have yet to process. We have long since put aside aspirations of self-actualization and seek merely to preserve aspects of ourselves from two years ago. Uncertainty of the future is itself a source of pain, and we have stopped dreaming about what it might hold – or......

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Joshua Stanton
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