Haazinu 5786: Building our Sukkah
The emotional summit of my spiritual year comes at the end of Yom Kippur. The liturgy for that moment is utterly unique, something we do at no other time of the year: Responsively crying out the Shema and then, seven times, "Adonai hu haelohim," "YHVH is God." Then, when we've reached the peak, the shofar sounds for a final time and we break out into an ecstatic dance as we sing, "L'shanah haba'ah b'yerushalaim habenuyah," "Next year in a rebuilt Jerusalem." While I and the people surrounding me have been fasting for 25 hours, we don't seem to feel exhausted, but rather exultant: light as air, high on the palpable spiritual energy and presence we've tapped into. It's a moment I try to...
My Fiftieth High Holidays: A Personal Jubilee (Shabbat Shuva 5786)
As I was walking to shul on Rosh Hashanah morning, I did some personal accounting ('tis the season and all). My first "High Holiday gig" was blowing shofar in our minyan in Ann Arbor around age 14. The first time I led Rosh Hashanah Musaf was at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in New Haven in the fall of 1999, and I've continued doing that in various places nearly every year since. But then it occurred to me that this year is my fiftieth experience of the High Holidays. (My father, may he rest in peace, always used to love wishing us a happy birthday by saying, "Mazal tov on entering your Xth year," referring not to the number signified by our birthday, but by that number plus one: the year...
Rosh Hashanah 5785: Everybody’s Talkin’ at Me
Reading my friend Jane Eisner's wonderful new biography of Carole King, I learned about the Brill Building, which sits at 49th and Broadway in Manhattan and, in the 1960s, was the center of the American pop music world. There was King herself, of course, but reading through the list of songwriters and bands that centered around the building one gets the sense of just how extraordinary a place it...
Rebecca Schisler Receives 2025 Pomegranate Prize
[New York, NY, September 17, 2025] - Rebecca Schisler, a core faculty member at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS), received the prestigious Pomegranate Prize given by the Covenant Foundation. She is one of just 10 Jewish educators in the U.S. to receive the 2025 honor and the second IJS faculty member to have earned the coveted designation. The organization presented the annual awards...
Accepting the End, In Order to Begin Anew: Practice for the Days of Awe
One of the central (and paradoxical) themes of the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, is that accepting our mortality opens the gate to personal transformation. The extent to which we make peace with the end of our lives helps us begin to live more fully today. Moses models this kind of radical acceptance as we move towards the end of the annual Torah reading cycle. The Sages imagined Moses...
Ki Tavo 5785: Perceiving Blessings Clearly
Many years ago when I was a young rabbi working at Northwestern University Hillel, I went to meet Patti Ray at her home. Patti was the longtime director of Hillel at Loyola University, one of our neighboring campuses in the Chicago area. After this long time, I don’t really remember why I went to her house, but that visit has had a lasting impact—because the day that I came, Patti was having her...
Ki Tetzei 5785: Two Funerals and a Story
On Monday I had the rare opportunity to attend two funerals of women who died well into their 90s. They happened to know each other, they were both matriarchs of families with whom I've enjoyed long friendships, and they even shared the same first name (though spelled differently: Rheta Shapiro and Rita Mendelsohn). It's not every day such a thing occurs. I have always found funerals in Elul to...
Shoftim 5785: First National Trust
One of the most delightful parts of being a parent has been studying parts of the Mishnah with each of my children. With my older kids, who are now both in college, it has been a little while. But my youngest is still at home, and our synagogue recently began a new collective project to study two mishnayot (individual teachings) per day, with the goal of completing the entire Mishnah in five...
Re’eh 5785: Inch by Inch, Row by Row
Ever since we moved into our home 12 years ago, we have faced a challenge whenever there's a heavy rain: our backyard turns into a small pond. Thankfully the water has not posed an issue for our basement (though the presence of three sump pumps in the house tells me that it probably did for the previous owners). Mostly it has just been a wet inconvenience. Depending on the amount of rainfall, it...
Ekev 5785: Dance Like Nobody’s Watching
I was at a wedding the other night when an elderly woman collapsed unconscious on the dance floor. It happened last Sunday. The wedding was beautiful. My wife and all of our kids and I were there together. We sang and danced and celebrated at this wonderful simcha of a family who have been our collective friends for many years. As my father, may he rest in peace, said after our own wedding: "To...
Re’eh: Shifting Our Awareness During Elul
Below is an excerpt from Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell’s teaching for the first week of Elul, as part of The Shofar Project 5785. Our guide this year is Rabbi Alan Lew's now-classic book, This is Real, and You are Completely Unprepared.Our Elul practice doesn't begin with a focus on our behaviors as one might suspect. Rather, it begins by shining a light on our perception. Rabbi Lew introduces Elul...
Welcoming the New IJS Board Members
We are thrilled to welcome six extraordinary leaders to the Institute for Jewish Spirituality’s Board of Directors. Each brings a deep commitment to Jewish spiritual practice, a wealth of professional expertise, and a passion for shaping a vibrant and inclusive Jewish future. Our newest board members reflect the communities we seek to serve—diverse in background, geography, and life experience,...
Vaetchanan 5785: That’s Why They Call It “The Present”
I think it's safe to assume that you've heard of Yoda. If you're not of a certain age, it may be a little less safe to assume that you've heard of another great animated spiritual master, Oogway. He's a tortoise who appears in the Kung Fu Panda movies. But he has one of the best lines about spiritual practice in contemporary popular culture: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but...
Devarim and Tisha b’Av 5785: Language in Exile
If you’re a full-fledged grownup in a relationship with a younger member of GenZ (born mid-1990s to early 2010s) or GenAlpha (born since then), you may find yourself, like me, sometimes at a loss when it comes to language. Some of this is normal generational churn: words like “rizz” and “sus,” phrases like “no cap,” are just as foreign to me as the incessant interjection of “like,” or the casual...
Matot-Masei 5785: Sleepless Nights
If you're a regular reader of these Friday reflections, you have probably noticed that, like a Law & Order episode, they follow a pretty predictable form: I start with an engaging personal story, pivot to a lesson drawn from the week's Torah portion, and then bring it home with a message about how Jewish spiritual practice can help us lead a more meaningful life. This week I feel a need to...
Pinchas 5785: Finding Home
I was blessed to grow up in the same house my entire childhood. My parents moved into 1258 Crosby Crescent in Ann Arbor in 1969, and my mom only left the house after my dad died 49 years later. I have no memories of moving during childhood; the first time I packed a moving box was when I went to college. My father, God bless him, had a hard time parting with material things, and by the time he...
Balak 5785: Deeper Meanings
I was recently watching a television interview with a woman in her 60s. Her husband, about the same age, still works long hours, though they’re already quite financially wealthy. “If he says to me on his deathbed that he regrets working too much,” the woman said, “I’ll kill him.” It’s a funny line, of course. What makes it funny is that, in this imagined scene, the man is dying, so the words,...
Chukat 5785: In(di)visible
Earlier this week, my middle son and I woke up bright and early in order to beat Chicago rush hour traffic and make it to Champaign, Illinois in time for his orientation/registration day. While our older son is also a student at U of I, the new student process then was entirely online because of the pandemic. So this was a new experience. Having grown up in another Big Ten college town (Ann...
Korach 5785: Hit the Drum
If you were in band class at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor in the 1980s and 90s, you probably had Robert Albritton for a teacher. And if you had Mr. Albritton for a teacher, you probably remember some of his many colorful sayings. More than 30 years later, my brothers and I still find occasion to recite them to each other. One of our favorites was what Mr. A would occasionally say to a...
Shabbat Reflection – Shelach 5785
A few months ago, my dear friend and synagogue rabbi Ari Hart delivered a sermon that opened with a critique of an aspect of some (perhaps a lot?) of contemporary mindfulness practice: nonjudgmental acceptance. Now, I hasten to add that Ari is a participant in our Clergy Leadership Program cohort that launches next month, and he was not offering this critique to knock Jewish spiritual practices...