“But Mom, if we celebrate Hanukkah, then Santa won’t come, will he?” This was the question from my clearly worried 7-year old last December as we prepared to celebrate our first Hanukkah. And ju...Read More
I hope this inter-Abrahamic refection serves to complicate our stance on some very touchy topics... to humanize them just a bit... and to realize that at the base of the most difficult conflicts are r...Read More
There’s that metaphor of God as a mountain, and different religious traditions are just different paths up the mountain. For most of my life, I stood at the foot of this mountain, telling passersby ...Read More
Weight. The very word is heavy, overweighted. Weight on my plate. Weight in my gut. Weight in my heart. Weight of the world. Heavy, heavy, heavy…it’s such a bad word. It’s something none of ...Read More
These past two months living in Jerusalem have been an experience of witnessing the struggle—in this city and in my own heart—between forces that seek to dismember us into discrete parts, and forc...Read More
Religion is, on the face of it, a social movement whose motivation is to inspire the best in humanity. So why does religion make us do the worst? Why, in so many places on so many issues, are religiou...Read More
Politicking. It’s a dangerous game to play. The political arena is a nasty space in the quest for votes and power, with much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Backbiting, name calling, cutting an...Read More
If on Rosh HaShanah we gain a picture of what can happen when we submit blindly to authority, Yom Kippur is our opportunity to choose another path....Read More
I was just looking at this website of people who are the 99% of the American people, the ones hurting because of the wanton ways of the 1%. I am part of that 99%. I could make a list of my grievances,...Read More
Out among the scraggly brush of the desert, the Sulha began at dusk and went late into the evening. We gathered together: Jewish and Arab Israelis, Palestinians, our small contingent of American Jews,...Read More