If you have something to say...
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If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
The Blog
Wait, you guys have Sunday on Saturday? Isn't that confusing? He's your type, he looks Jewish. So he tried to Jew me down. Oops. No offense. Is ...
The shape of Jewish time is different. According to the teachings of the Torah, history does not unfold along a time-line but a time-spiral.
For proper introspection, there is only reflection. We must reflect on where we have been to know where we ought to journey toward.
We often flow unaware from one moment on the calendar to the next. There are too many times where we fail to remember what we did last month, last week or even yesterday.
Even as a full-fledged adult, the loss of one parent, let alone both, is a profound wound.
This year, I will be counting the Omer and working to prepare myself for Shavuot. But I will harness, rather than abstain from, the joy that inspires so many of my reflections.
Passover is important, but Passover is incomplete. In celebrating our freedom, we celebrate our ability to enjoy life, one precious day at a time. Each day we encounter other human beings and have the task to create and foster meaningful relationships.
The Shunammite (a woman of the town of Shunem) is a wealthy married woman living in the time of the kings of Israel and Judah. She does lovingkindness out of a sense of abundance and majesty: chesed sh'b'malkhut.
Religious ritual is a way of structuring time so that we, not employers, the market or the media, are in control. Life needs its pauses, its chapter breaks, if the soul is to have space to breathe. Otherwise, we may not be in Egypt, but we can still be slaves.
I recently read in the New York Times about a study of Princeton University Students who actually believed that they had an impact on the Super Bowl merely by thinking about the game. How ridiculous is that?!
Every person at some point has a vision of what they would like to accomplish in life, what their true beliefs are and what their innate potential could achieve if activated. To translate that vision into reality is one of our main struggles.
As Passover 2012 ends, let's finally break the bonds, and liberate ourselves from Top Rabbis lists. America has enough idols. Let's smash this one (the list, not the rabbis).
For 44 years I have read, pretended to read, heard, slept through or spaced out through the reading of the Haggadah. For some reason, this time around, I seemed to focus on how screwy and shocking it was that the final action to attain freedom involved a low blow.
Rabbi Bruce Lustig shares a lesson from the Passover story regarding the imperative to work for social justice for all God's children, and how young people in his community at his congregation are taking this to the next level.
The story of Exodus tells us over and over again that all human beings fear change even when all the evidence is pointing towards how much better the unknown will be.
In this season of miracles -- the miracle of rebirth and the miracle of freedom from enslavement -- I am reminded of an oft-repeated phrase in the Old Testament: "God is one."
