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Judaism
The Buttonhook
My son sprinted to each traffic light / in his black hat and dark Sabbath suit / while the elderly congregation two miles away / waited for him to help lead morning prayers.
June 2021The Loss
Some treat shiva purely as a party. Some have a mournful air. Some look deeply into your eyes, and you can see that they have suffered, too. This is the higher purpose of suffering: to inspire deep-eyed compassion. It’s one of those truisms that is actually true.
December 2020
Monotheism At Thirty Thousand Feet
Below me the world turned slowly through the night, unaware of the multilayered geopolitics my coffee-jangled brain was imposing upon it. I could find reasons to forgive Judaism and Islam their present-day sins. Christianity was another matter.
May 2020
In Pieces
Rabbi Nachman had a special dish which he used for the Sabbath loaves. It had belonged to his own master, Rabbi Lev of Grenoble, and it occupied a prominent place in his home.
December 2019excerpted from The Diary Of A Young Girl
One good thing has come out of this: as the food gets worse and the decrees more severe, the acts of sabotage against the authorities are increasing.
June 2019
June 2019
Featuring Stephen R. Schwartz, Parker J. Palmer, Gloria Baker Feinstein, and more.
June 2019Sunbeams
June 2019It is an illusion to suppose that a dictator makes himself; at most he seizes an opportunity made for him by passive, stupid, incompetent, and, above all, unsatisfied and fearful men.
The Holiness Hidden Within The World
Rabbi Rachel Timoner On Rediscovering Judaism
Our God is the God of the widow and the orphan and the stranger, a God who says, “If you harm them, their cries will reach me.”
October 2018
The Natural Order Of Hebrew School
A low-grade, persistent terror plagued me throughout the summer before sixth grade, because in June I’d found out I was to spend the next year in Rabbi Friedberg’s class at my Orthodox Jewish Hebrew school.
October 2018
Selected Poems
— from “Falling From The Sky” | When we found out our daughter had gone deaf, / I did not question God’s fairness
October 2018
