"If you're an author or Ph.D. candidate who had the foresight to propose a book on the philosophy of "Avatar" before the film was even released in theaters, the past week (and the blogosphere) has been very, very good to you." - Dave Itzkoff, NY Times, Dec. 22,...

It's hard to be a Jew on Christmas My friends won't let me join in any games. And I can't sing Christmas songs Or decorate a Christmas tree. Or leave water out for Rudolph 'cause there's something wrong with me! I'm a Jew, a lonely Jew, on Christmas. -- Kyle...

Let the clucking begin. As the tabloids pile on the revelations about our falling star, Tiger Woods, pundits have begun the predictable and proverbial shaking of heads, clucking of tongues, and various forms of bemoaning. Are none of our heroes pure anymore? Or, conversely, is our celebrity culture so ravenous...

In the first five articles in this series, we've explored some of the basic questions of the Kabbalah: what it is, how it can function as a spiritual practice, and how it is taught (and mis-taught) today. Beginning this week, we shift gears, digging into some core...

Now that New Moon looks poised to enter the top tier of box office receipts (some are now projecting $400m domestic), "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob" have moved from the emo fringe to the mainstream of America. No doubt teenagers everywhere are rolling their eyes as their moms...

Over the last few weeks, we've begun exploring what Kabbalah is, and how it can function as a contemporary spiritual practice. A number of you have asked how to find, and choose, a teacher, so I thought I'd address that question now.

As we've explored already, learning Kabbalah...

On a trip to Atlanta this week, amid the same-sex marriage debate in my home state of New York , I had an opportunity to visit the Martin Luther King, Jr, memorial site for the first time. Watching footage of lynchings and segregationist racism, from the perspective of the...

Kabbalah is a centuries-old body of literature, but for those who study it today -- whether in its classical form or contemporary ones -- it is not simply read, like a novel or a blog. Rather, like yoga or meditation, there's a perception that Kabbalah is meant to do something:...

Last week, in part two of our introduction to Kabbalah, we suggested that in Jewish mystical theology, "God does not exist -- God is existence itself." But then we ended by asking if this is true, if everything is God, why do things appear as they do? And...

Last week, in part 1 of my Guide to Kabbalah, we began at the beginning, asking the simple question of "What is Kabbalah?" and providing four parallel answers: literal (a "received" tradition of mystical and esoteric thought), spiritual (a system which enables "receiving" of more of the world, or...

I first encountered Kabbalah eighteen years ago, as a student at Columbia College. I had no idea that its obscure texts and abstruse concepts would one day become a central part of my life -- let alone Britney's, Madonna's, and Demi's.

Despite all the fame, or maybe because...

Marching today in Washington with tens of thousands of other gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) people, and tens of thousands more straight allies, it was easy to see reflected on a large scale what I've known on a smaller scale for years: the gay generation gap is widening.

In...

Will American spirituality get serious? Those of us who do regular spiritual practice -- whether it's meditating every day or giving our time to the less fortunate, spending focused time with our kids or going to church each week -- have long been vilified by the cynical press as narcissists,...

The vibe has changed at the airport. In the first years after 9/11, there was a tension in the security lines: each time we took our laptops out of their bags, we remembered what happened in September. Whatever our politics, we grimly adjusted to the new reality.

Then came the...

"Really?" the guy at the Alamo Rental Car place said, when I'd told him about Burning Man. "I heard it was just a lot of naked people running around on drugs."

Coated in gypsum dust, and still high not on drugs but on the altered consciousness of radical creativity...

If tomorrow, you could completely free yourself from guilt -- if you'd never feel guilty again, no matter what you did -- would you do it?

Americans today give diametrically opposed answers. On one side, there are those -- primarily conservative, religious, and traditional -- who would say no: they...

This hit the wires on Friday....
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Statement of Leaders of LGBT Jewish Synagogues & Organizations
in Response to the Attack on the LGBT Youth Center in Tel Aviv on August 1, 2009

On behalf of our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) synagogues and Jewish organizations, we...

I called him Shakey, because he couldn't sit still. About forty-five or fifty years old, with thick white hair up front and a bald spot on the crown of his head, Shakey sat near me in the meditation hall for forty days. He moved constantly: shifting his posture, moving his...

Most of us, when we hear about meditation, picture someone sitting calmly on a cushion, hands held just so. Well, that is one form of meditation, but there are many, many others -- some of which are a lot easier to fit into a busy schedule than the traditional forty...

One of my best spiritual teachers is a dog. I met her on a silent meditation retreat a few years ago. On that retreat, as, alas, on many others, I had been struggling with one of the petty irritations that meditators work with all the time: restless yogis making noise....