Relationships & Family / 22 Nov 2022
Three Last Minute Recipes For A Happier Thanksgiving
Beyond cooking, here are some new “recipes” to add to your repertoire
Art & Culture / 16 Nov 2022
Dave Chappelle And The Unconscious
Reflecting on Dave Chappelle’s monologue on SNL.
Breaking False Dichotomies, Daily Life, Hold Dualities Together, Inspiring Story, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized, Weekly Parsha, Wisdom Warehouse / 11 Nov 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 on the Mall in Washington D.C., as part of the March for Women’s Lives, a pro-choice rally of over one million people. That rally convinced me to move to Washington after graduation and work in progressive politics. I never imagined I’d see her almost 20 years later, on the eve of an urgent midterm election, on the backdrop of an American political landscape rife with white supremacy, antisemitism, and sexist oppression embodied by the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. I have to admit that I shed some tears at the concert. She reminded me of who I was in my teens and twenties when I carried a protest sign and breathed the gentle floating fumes of tear gas more times than I can list, and I felt a surge of energy to return to the rawness of that work. Putting my body on the line was, in some ways, simpler and more direct than what I feel like I do now, trying to change a culture of individualism and cruelty one person at a time. These weeks, we are deep in the stories of Abraham. The Torah doesn’t spend so much time on why God specifically picked Abraham to spread God’s message. Midrash fills in the picture, imagining…
Spirituality & Faith, This Week In Wisdom, Turning The Mundane Into The Sacred, Uncategorized / 10 Nov 2022
Witnessing Evangelical Awe in Israel
Removing the gaps between faiths that can lead to Antisemitism
News & Politics / 10 Nov 2022
What Josh Shapiro Means to Me
To have a governor of our state who leads with his Jewish values feels like a wonderful antidote to the hate we have experienced.
This powerful poem by Marge Piercy invites us to ask the key question to a meaningful life.? I recently re-read this poem and reflected on what the world needs from us. To Be of Use ? The people I love the best jump into work headfirst without dallying in the shallows and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight. They seem to become natives of that element, the black sleek heads of seals bouncing like half submerged balls. I love people, who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy......
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Inspiring People, Videos, Wisdom Warehouse |
November 23, 2013
Video: Reflections on JFK and Flawed Heroes
From Odyssey Network’s Faith on the Record series: “On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield reflects on the concept of the “flawed hero” in the Bible and how the extreme scrutiny of politicians in America today makes no allowance for flaws.??? Rabbi Hirschfield asks if we can embrace the flawed heroes around us and strive to be heroic ourselves, in spite our our own flaws.” Odyssey Networks tells the stories of faith in action changing the world for the better.? Their stories explore a......
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If you’re reading this then you are probably like me: among the economic top 2% in the world. We enjoy more security, food, shelter, clothing, physical safety, health care, education. We also enjoy more luxuries; meals in restaurants, 500 channels of TV, vacations, leisure time.? And we do so more than any human beings in history for whom scarcity was the rule. It turns out however, that the ethical and psychological challenges of abundance are quite different than scarcity. Two psychologists from Berkeley, Dacher Keltner and Paul Piff have shown that higher......
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Being tempted by people, things or behaviors which may not be so good for us is part of being human.? I even think that succumbing to those temptations is part of being human, and not necessarily in a bad way, either?- at least not always.? But clearly, there are plenty of times when we want to resist, when we need to resist, or when we regret not resisting.? What helps in those moments? How do you deal with being tempted by something that you would otherwise not want to do or be......
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We are coming into the holiday season and something is badly out of whack in America – beyond our ongoing economic and political crises.? Take Hawaii State Representative Tom Bowers who, sledgehammer in hand, walks his district’s streets and parks looking for shopping carts used by homeless people, which, he then smashes to bits.? Bowers is “disgusted” by homeless people and is so proud of his tough guy approach that he allows himself to be filmed engaged in his grassroots effort to rid his district of the homeless. When asked if he......
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A recent study about people with relatively new significant others has come to the conclusion that being in love essentially makes you stupid – or, rather, less capable of distinguishing relevant from irrelevant information. We’ve all had romances, relationships or other emotional issues distract us from the task at hand. Is that type of preoccupation the equivalent of becoming dumber? Or could it be us getting smarter and re-focusing on our true priorities? According to one researcher, the results of the study prove that if you’re in a relatively new relationship, you’re......
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Spirituality & Faith, Wisdom Warehouse |
November 15, 2013
Thanksgivukkah: This November 28th, Celebrate Abundance and Possibility
Call it a simple coincidence, call it Thanksgivukkah, call it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to integrate the quintessentially American and the quintessentially Jewish, but whatever you call it, and whether you are Jewish or not, celebrate the abundance and possibility in your life this year, as Thanksgiving and Hanukkah overlap. From recalling a group of brave, hopeful, religious outsiders, the Pilgrims, who boarded leaky ships bound for a place they did not know, to a group of equally brave and hopeful religious outsiders, the ancient Israelite clan known as the Maccabees, who took......
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News & Politics, Videos, Wisdom Warehouse |
November 14, 2013
Video: Our Shrinking World and the Typhoon in the Philippines
From Odyssey Network’s Faith on the Record series: “Can our sense of neighborhood expand to those who are 10,000 miles away?”? That’s the question Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, President of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership asks in the wake of the typhoon in the Philippines which has taken the lives of thousands of people.? As the initial media coverage recedes in favor of front-page stories that are more immediately relevant to our lives as Americans, how do we respond to the humanitarian crisis that continues to unfold? Odyssey Networks......
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Truly caring for a person at the end of life requires conversations – about love and legacy, about bestowing and receiving blessings, about choosing life versus fighting death. I am a well-educated man, a rabbi who was trained and has experience in comforting individuals on their sickbeds.? My five younger brothers, also have good educations, some of us have multiple degrees.? Yet when my mother was diagnosed with late stage pancreatic cancer five years ago and told she had 12 weeks to live, neither my family nor I was prepared. We listened......
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Life is complicated. That’s a nice way of saying that, for most of us anyway, life comes at us faster, messier and with less clarity than we often long for. People often feel like there is not enough to hang onto, not enough that we can rely on, not enough that is certain. Don’t despair! You are not alone, the challenge is not new, and there are things we can do to make it better. It was this week — November 13, 1789 to be specific — that Benjamin Franklin wrote a......
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Latest Video
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.
