If we choose to pray to God, let's not direct our prayers to the Divine for Boston, for the Red Sox, for the Marathon, or for any other thing that doesn't breathe.

Let's direct our prayers to God for people. Let's pray for 8-year-old Martin Richard's family and friends and...

This year at our Passover Seder, I experienced something deeply powerful -- something I had not felt in the context of Passover before. Like many, we spend much of our Seder going around the table, each reading a section from the Haggadah out loud. Generally, because our Seder is populated...

Each year at the Passover Seder, we read these words:

"This year we are here, next year, in the land of Israel.
This year we are slaves, next year, free people."
(From Ha Lachma Anya, "This is the Bread of Affliction")

We are in her house in Dallas. Sesame Street plays on the television I am supposed to be watching. But instead, I watch her, specifically her hands. She grips her new, clean easel, finagling its three legs in different positions until it stands independently. She extends her arms, pinching her...

Like most everyone I know, I am having a really hard time coping with the horrific murders in Connecticut. Since I have young children myself, I keep having these nightmarish visions placing our family there, me waiting at the fire station and my child never returning to me. I see...

When women are detained and arrested at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for wearing tallitot (Jewish prayer shawls) and "endangering public peace" by intoning word and melody of prayer, we are all diminished: all genders, all denominations, all people of faith, all lovers of Israel, all who value equal rights,...

As Jews, we find ourselves in one of the most spiritually intense periods of the year -- the Aseret Ymei Teshuvah -- the 10 Days of Repentance carrying us from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur. Our tradition envisions that the gates of Divine Judgment open on Rosh Hashanah and close...