Teshuvah and The Environment
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 […]
September 19, 2023
September 15, 2023
Trying to Attain Perfection In An Imperfect World
“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) […]
September 15, 2023
Who By Water and Who By Fire
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 […]
September 14, 2023
What Makes This Apple Cake Recipe Jewish?
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 […]
September 8, 2023
Quiet Your Soul
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 […]
May 26, 2023
To Covet or Not To Covet
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 […]
April 18, 2023
A Personal Yom HaShoah
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 […]
April 7, 2023
Jewish Song of the Week: ‘Dayeinu’ by Nefesh Mountain
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 […]
April 6, 2023
Imagining My Ancestors’ Passover Helps Me To Prepare For My Own
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 […]
March 30, 2023
Add Flavor To Your Seder With Mexican Charoset, Passover Salsa
At Passover, we are called to imagine ourselves as part of the Exodus. To support this, we are encouraged to amend and augment tradition to reflect the times. The Seder […]