CyberTorah

Exercise: I invite you this week to concentrate on blessing people in your life. I invite you to look at the people around you and imagine: what are the words they need to hear right now? How can I name something in them that will be strengthened and enlivened by its being noticed? Take note of someone you love, write down or think about the words they need. Then, perhaps, find the courage to offer them...Read more...

Jewish spirituality is broken. This manifests in several ways. It starts with theology. When we talk about
God, we lack a shared referent. We don’t mean some old guy up in the sky watching over us. We also
are Jews, so we know we don’t mean Jesus as a human manifestation of the Divine. (As an aside, the
Pew study shows that the one belief shared by Jews is that we aren’t Christian. This is a disaster for
Judaism because...Read more...

“Jacob encountered the place….”

As Jacob flees Esau, the Bible relates that he “encountered” or, more literally, “struck” a place. The Midrash imagines the place is none other than the place of Isaac’s almost sacrifice. At the very moment of leaving, Jacob encounters the most profound of family dramas, the binding of his father, the man who taught him to think of God as “the fear of...Read more...

Yep, He Really Said That

In recent weeks, there have been several disturbing expressions of antisemitism. Two people spoke from unbelievable depths of ignorance. One of whom should have known better, and pretended he was “only joking.” In none of these cases have the people involved apologized in a meaningful way or...Read more...

Criticism of others is hard wired into the human psyche. When something goes poorly, especially
something that matters to us, we react as though the difficulty or failing is a threat. This floods the body
with all kinds of hormones that narrow our cognition and focus us on the threat. While this made sense
your friend has just foolishly thrown away his spear, it limits our response to today’s challenges.

As a...Read more...

Yom Kippur is both the most hopeful and most difficult Jewish day of the year. On the one hand, it rings
out and is filled with hope because it asserts we can change. The whole idea of Teshuvah, of repentance,
is that we are not prisoners of our past, of the scripts that we and our parents and families have written
for us. We are capable of writing our own entries in the Book of Life. With introspection and prayer, we
are...Read more...

 Writing Scripts of Hope

People often say, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” or “God only sends us what we can handle.” I believe these related sentiments are almost entirely untrue. Certain challenges do strengthen us and teach us how to handle adversity. And I suppose by definition anything we survive we can handle. And yet, I believe losses and challenges wound us...Read more...