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…
Another Way Of Looking At Things, Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Compassion and Empathy, Longform, Relationships & Family, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
December 15, 2021
Everything I need to know about dying with dignity I learned from a houseplant
Life lessons from a dying plant...
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Compassion for difficulties |
December 09, 2021
Forgiving My Grandpa For Surviving The Holocaust While His Family Died
Looking at him again now through post-pandemic eyes, Grandpa seems heroic....
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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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The death of a grandparent can be traumatic to children of any age, especially during the pandemic....
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Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Compassion and Empathy, Hold Dualities Together, Longform, Longform, Mundane Into Sacred, There's More To You Than You Realize, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized, Wisdom Daily News |
November 24, 2021
What does it mean to have enough?
Do you really have nothing?...
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Book Club, Historic Profiles, Interviews With Wise People Of Today, Longform, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
November 23, 2021
Inviting Kids To Make History By Reading About Hanukkah: A conversation with Emily Singer, author of Gilgul
Emily Singer is the author of a new book — one receiving good attention in many quarters, including a warm review in a recent edition of the Jerusalem Post. The book is called Gilgul, and while it’s intended for middle-school-age readers, and would make a great Hanukkah gift for same, it carries a message we could all use — one combining great pride in ethnic/national/religious identity and genuinely embracing the idea that each particularity must connect with something larger than itself. I had the opportunity to “sit down” with Emily, despite the......
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Compassion and Empathy, Grief & Coping, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
November 19, 2021
The Great Forgiving
This week’s Torah portion always gets me in the gut. It’s the story of Jacob returning to his long-estranged brother Esau, from whom he fled 20 years beforehand after betraying Esau by stealing his birthright and blessing. Now, so much time has passed, Jacob doesn’t even know Esau anymore. We can tell this because Jacob takes great pains to send gifts ahead, to prepare for Esau’s wrath but hope for his forgiveness, to plan for any eventual outcome. Jacob can’t anticipate Esau’s reaction. Despite Jacob’s worry that Esau’s still violently mad about......
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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.
