Updated: 2013-01-11 12:00:00
I am carrying my son around a bus filled with scholars: rifling through my carry-on in search of cheese sticks and bananas, exploring the wooden deck and silk flowers. Someone ushers in my rebbe proclaiming He's just received a clean...
Updated: 2013-01-10 12:00:00
Back in early 2009, I interviewed Dr. Rachel Adler for Zeek. My interview with her ran in the spring 2009 print edition of Zeek, the Sex, Gender, and God issue. (I posted about that here at the time.) Zeek no...
Updated: 2013-01-09 16:13:43
CHANGE IN THE TODDLER HOUSE You run and climb, sit backwards on your little chair, ascend stairs one footfall on each step. You sleep in the big-boy bed your daddy made and we're about to remove the rail. You speak...
Updated: 2013-01-09 12:00:00
Next Monday afternoon at OHALAH (the annual conference of the association of Jewish Renewal clergy, which is also named OHALAH) I'll be co-presenting a session for the first time with my friend David. The session is titled The Modern Clergyperson's...
Updated: 2013-01-06 12:00:00
This is the d'var Torah I offered yesterday at CBI. (Cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.) "The Israelites were fruitful and they swarmed." The root ש/ר/צ / sh-r-tz connotes the unsettling scuttling of insects. Once the Israelites began to...
Updated: 2013-01-04 14:27:49
For E. For the rabbis, forty signifies fruition: days before the embryo takes shape, weeks from conception until birth. The flood which cleansed the earth rained for forty days and nights like a mikvah, which must contain forty measures of...
Updated: 2013-01-03 14:45:00
Looking back at my previous offerings for this week's Torah portion -- Shemot, the first parsha in the book of Shemot, which is known in English as Exodus -- I rediscovered a Torah poem I'd forgotten I'd written: Labor. I...
Updated: 2012-12-27 16:35:00
Last week, OHALAH -- the association of Jewish Renewal clergy -- voted on a resolution regarding UN recognition of Palestine. The resolution is now posted on the OHALAH website: Majority Opinion Among OHALAH Members on the UN Vote Recognizing Palestine...
Updated: 2012-12-24 13:45:52
There's no preschool today or tomorrow, so instead of spending these days at shul / at my desk, I'm spending them with our son. Today we'll alternate between watching Peanuts cartoons and playing with trains and paints at home, and...
Updated: 2012-12-21 15:49:36
The book of Judges contains some powerful stories. Some years ago I wrote a trio of poems exploring three of those stories and the women who feature in them: the judge and prophet Devorah, Yael who slew the general Sisera,...
Updated: 2012-12-20 08:00:12
A Rabbi Without Borders: Doesn't worry, at least not very much, about dilution, or work from a narrative of erosion. That's item six on the Rabbis Without Borders FAQ. Of all the things we talked about during the two days...
Updated: 2012-12-16 19:34:55
I wasn't paying attention when I chose where to drop my bags and settle in, but by sheer luck I picked the side of the train which runs right alongside the Hudson. At this season the hills are a deep...
Updated: 2012-12-16 12:00:00
Here's the d'var Torah I offered yesterday at my shul. (Crossposted to my From the Rabbi blog.) At the beginning of today's Torah portion, Pharaoh dreams two dreams. First, seven handsome cows arise, and seven lean cows devour them. Then...
