September 22, 2023
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In March, I had the good fortune to travel to the Deep South with 200 other Reconstructionist Jews from congregations around the country on a sobering yet uplifting journey that […]
Continue readingSeptember 19, 2023
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As we engage during the High Holidays in the process of teshuvah/repentance or change, we mostly focus on how we have hurt other people and how we want to be […]
Continue readingSeptember 15, 2023
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“The place that those who do teshuvah can attain; — those who are completely righteous can never attain. Be-makom she-ba’alei teshuvah omdin ein tzadikkim gemurim ye-kholin l’amode.“ (Tractate Berakhot 34b) […]
Continue readingSeptember 15, 2023
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Look around you on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur as the powerful, frightening piyyut (liturgical poem) of UnetaneTokef is sung during the Musaf prayer. This awe-inspiring section depicts how we […]
Continue readingSeptember 14, 2023
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My father’s family is squarely Ashkenazi: Lithuanians and Poles who came through Ellis Island, raised families in New York, some retired to Florida, others made their way west to California […]
Continue readingSeptember 8, 2023
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Part One of a Three-Part Series on Shabbat The celebrated author, Aldous Huxley, published The Perennial Philosophy in 1945. He called his era, “the age of noise,” and railed against […]
Continue readingMay 26, 2023
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A FEW DAYS BEFORE Shavuot some years back, I got an intriguing invitation from Rabbi Zalman at Chabad, who was putting together a Tikkun Leil (special evening service) for the […]
Continue readingApril 18, 2023
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Last night we began the observance of Yom Hashoah v’Hag’vurah (the Jewish National Day of Commemorating the Holocaust and the Heroism) at the Monument to the Martyrs of Zagłębie, just […]
Continue readingApril 7, 2023
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Pesach time is here! If you haven’t heard “Dayeinu” sung bluegrass-style before, then buckle up — Nefesh Mountain is about to rock your Passover! Re-imagining ways to sing the songs […]
Continue readingApril 6, 2023
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Two years ago on erev Passover, my mother’s first cousin emailed us an amazing surprise: he’d received an audio recording of an extended family seder from the late 1950s from […]
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