There's More To You Than You Realize / 13 May 2022
Do We Create Or Discover Ourselves?
What role do we play in our own “becoming”?
Grief & Coping / 08 May 2022
Even After The Rituals, The Longing For My Mother Remains
The grief that remains after the rituals.
Art & Culture / 03 May 2022
A Rabbi’s Perspective On Jesus Christ Superstar
Why one rabbi is changing his mind about the show…
Building New Identities, Historic Profiles, Inspiring Story, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized / 13 Apr 2022
Pesach 2022
This week, we welcome the holiday of Passover, the holiday of freedom. During the Passover seder, we act out the story of our ancestors being redeemed from Egypt. In the Talmud, there’s also the idea that we are supposed to understand ourselves to have been redeemed from slavery, too. And there are those who take it one step further. Our ancestors were redeemed in ancient Egypt, we too were redeemed, and not only that: The 19th-century Chassidic Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter (commonly known by the name of his influential book, The Sefat Emet) teaches that each and every year we have the chance to be newly free – if we put in the spiritual work. He writes: “On every Passover, a Jew becomes like a new being like we were during the Exodus from Egypt; like a newborn child. The inner essence implanted by God within our hearts is renewed. That inner essence is called lechem ‘oni [poor people’s bread–a synonym for matzah] because it is totally without expansion. Matzah is just the essence of dough, which afterward changes and ferments. In the same way, every Jew has an inner essence, a gift from God. And actually, our usual task is to expand that point, to draw all our deeds to follow it. This is our job throughout the year, for better or worse. But when this Holiday of Matzot comes, it is the time when that inner essence itself is renewed and purified from all defilement. Therefore, we must guard it from any “ferment” or change on this holiday.” One way to take this is that matzah is our essential self, and bread (chametz) represents our poofed-up ego, what we are with all the trappings of identity and society on us. This is the one time of year when…
A silver lining exists in every situation. The question is, are we mentally flexible enough to start seeing it? ...
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Breaking False Dichotomies, Hold Dualities Together, Longform, Longform, This Week In Wisdom |
May 13, 2021
Once-in-a-Decade Revelations
Every year at Shavuot, Jewish communities all around the world celebrate the giving of Torah with raucous gatherings, enormous slabs of cheesecake, and Torah learning from dusk to dawn. Of the many fond memories I have of my time living in Jerusalem a decade ago, house-hopping throughout the night of Shavuot sits comfortably atop the list. I learned provocative, inspiring Torah from complete strangers, danced with folks from Haredi to Hiloni (strictly Orthodox to strictly secular), and emerged from my last learning session to feel the rising sun on my face while I prayed at the......
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Longform, Longform, News & Politics, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized, Wisdom Daily News |
May 12, 2021
Pew’s Jews: Five First Takeaways
Who doesn’t love a good demographic study?...
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A sincere apology to our children has significant benefits to their development in both the short and long term....
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Historic Profiles, Inspiring Story, Longform, Longform, Relationships & Family, Uncategorized |
May 04, 2021
Looking Evil In the Face, Boldly and Beautifully
“If there is only one book you are going to read….” is not something I say often, and something I don’t think should ever be said about a topic as important and as complicated as the Holocaust. I will say though, that anyone who cares about the topic, or any questions of evil and how we respond to it, really must read Faris Cassell’s new, and already award-winning book, The Unanswered Letter. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Faris about her work, which had already been awarded first place in......
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Listen To The Names Of The Victims First
A video where Brad Hirschfield lists the victims names in the recent Orlando shooting. Because first we need to internalize a tragedy before we jump to speak.
