When it comes to the Bible, it's easy to fall back on standard interpretations year after year, but when we examine a multifaceted story such as Esther's through a modern lens, we see the many ways the story resonates in contemporary life.

When humans take the risk to act with virtue and courage, invisible forces conspire on the side of good. Those who use power to do evil will fall, tripped up by their own tortuous machinations.

I make sure my students end just about every week of term by celebrating a Jewish holiday. We're mostly Protestants, so we're not so good at it; but we have fun, and we learn about Jewish history -- our shared history -- by laughing, eating, dancing and praying, sometimes in botched Hebrew.

Think that Yom Kippur is the holiest day on the Jewish calendar? Guess again....

After almost a century of Dorothy Height making this country and world a more just, equal, and hopeful place she is now in heaven, and the rest of us are now going to have to step it up down here.