Building New Identities, Historic Profiles, Inspiring Story, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
April 13, 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......
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Compassion and Empathy, Grief & Coping, Inspiring Story, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized, Weekly Parsha |
April 01, 2022
Contagion is Universal
Looking at how we all need help sometimes...
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In this week’s Torah portion, Vayakheil, the master artisan Bezalel is putting together all the items for Mishkan, the dwelling-place for God. There are a whole host of materials listed – poles and pails, gratings and basins, fire pans, and fleshhooks, and most of them are presented simply as a list. But only one item has a backstory: “He made the laver of copper and its stand of copper, from the mirrors of the women who performed tasks at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.” (Ex. 38:8) Unlike everything else that......
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Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Compassion and Empathy, Inspiring Story, Longform, Uncategorized |
November 11, 2021
And I Did Not Know…
“I GOT ONE!” With the recent announcement by the CDC that the Pfizer vaccine has been approved for children ages 5-11, my wife Lizzie scrambled to find available appointments for our two oldest children. She refreshed the browser each time the search came up empty, going through the painstaking process of inputting their information multiple times until – finally – she landed appointments for both of them. I can’t quite explain how cathartic it felt to see the confirmation screen with their names on it, to know that we would soon reach......
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Inspiring Story, Longform, Relationships & Family, Uncategorized |
November 05, 2021
Esau and Zero-Sum Thinking
The first question most of us ask about elections is, “Who won?” Whether it’s for President or Town Clerk, Senator or Mayor, Congressperson or School Board member, we often have a preferred candidate going in, and feel either excited or disappointed, depending on the result. In short, we view elections as a zero-sum game: there’s a winner, and there’s a loser, and that’s it. But elections are not the same as politics — in the words of former Governor Mario Cuomo, politicians campaign in poetry, but govern in prose. The goal of......
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Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Inspiring Story, Longform |
October 27, 2021
Abraham’s Conflicted Love
We live in an era of punditry. Everyone has an interpretation of events, yet few of us stop to understand what actually might have happened. Interpretation occludes understanding, as tenuously grand conclusions occlude more modest insights that are built upon a firmer footing. Similar critique might be applied to how many of us approach the founder of the Jewish people, Abraham. To venerate the origins of Judaism itself, we conclude at the outset that he was a moral superhero – all the while deemphasizing a personal life riddled with painful complexity. We......
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Another Way Of Looking At Things, Breaking False Dichotomies, Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Compassion and Empathy, Inspiring Story, Longform, Longform, Spirituality & Faith, Uncategorized |
July 09, 2021
Leadership Lessons and Serving the Servers in The Holy Land
Also by Rabbi Joshua Stanton You are standing in Bethlehem’s Manger Square, the Church of the Nativity looms before you, and you feel like the kid in the Disneyland commercial who says, “I’ve been waiting my whole life to see you.” You are a Christian leader standing in the Western Wall Plaza and discover that you now understand more fully how and why so many Jews attach so deeply to this one spot in particular and to Israel in general, even as you also discover that you, as a Christian, may still feel......
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Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Historic Profiles, Inspiring Story, Longform, Longform, Spirituality & Faith, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
June 30, 2021
Tears on the Digital Road to Jerusalem
“If a picture paints a thousand words, then an experience paints 10,000.” “Stand where He stood. Walk where He walked. Discover it for yourself.” When we bring rising Christian leaders on pilgrimage to Israel, we emphasize that there is nothing like seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling the complicated, beautiful, Holy Land that birthed their tradition and ours. Born out of necessity amid the pandemic, we began to experiment with digital pilgrimages to see if they could feel every bit as real as those that happened in person. We knew from the......
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Historic Profiles, Inspiring Story, Longform, Uncategorized |
June 25, 2021
When Do We See The Blessings?
Missing what is right in front of us......
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