At Home in the Darkness
At this time of year, where I live in Toronto, the trees have shed almost all of their leaves and their branches stand bare against the grey sky. Day by day, the hours of sunlight shorten while darkness holds on longer to the mornings and rolls in earlier and earlier in the evenings. Overhead, skeins of Canada geese honk their way south, and I almost take their leaving personally, abandoning me along with the snow and cold. With the loss of light and warmth, I find myself habitually focused on what I am losing, fighting against the changing season and its natural impact on me. When I face these outer and inner changes unmindfully, I fall into habits of either pushing myself to resist rest,...
Extracting the Hidden Light
As we enter the darkest season of the year, Jewish tradition teaches of the or haganuz, a hidden light revealed through presence and righteous acts. Legend says 36 hidden righteous ones—the Lamed Vavnikim—sustain the world. This Hanukkah, as we light 36 candles, we’re called to embody their spirit, revealing the light within ourselves and the world.
A Quiet Mind (Chayei Sarah 5785)
Many years ago, when my oldest son (now 21) was little, he asked for me to read him stories from a children's bible on our shelf. It had belonged to my wife as a kid, and I was excited that Jonah wanted to hear these stories. But of course it got complicated, because these stories are not, in fact, children's stories for the most part. They talk about some pretty adult topics. I particularly...
Josh in Conversation with Rabbi Adina Allen
We are grateful to Rabbi Adina Allen for sharing her insights with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.Rabbi Adina Allen is a spiritual leader, author, and educator who grew up in an art studio where she learned firsthand the power of creativity for connecting to self and to the Sacred. She is cofounder and creative director of Jewish Studio Project (JSP), an organization that is seeding...
Responding to the Anxiety of Now: Vayera 5785
I was riding in a Lyft at 4:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, en route to LAX to make a flight home in time for my son's 12th birthday party. My driver, a middle-aged African-American woman, asked me where I was headed. "Chicago." "Chicago?! Take me with you! That's where I'm from." "Oh, where in Chicago did you grow up?" She proceeded to name what felt like 25 different neighborhoods: First she...
A Post-Election Practice: Cultivating Our Loving Intention
We live in a world that demands results. (And those results must come quickly enough to match our impatience). We live in a world that keeps score. (How are we doing?) We live in a world that is always comparing. (Am I better or worse, smarter, more righteous?) We live in a world that measures success by how much money we make or how many people like us. I want to suggest another way to live....
Finding God in the Depths
In times of darkness and struggle, what if the deepest divine connection is found not in the absence of hardship, but in the raw, authentic moments of longing and love shared with others? This teaching from Rebecca Schisler is an invitation to discover that the true power of the divine is always present—one breath, one moment, one prayer away—ready to be felt even in the most challenging of...
Finding a haven in a turbulent world: Lekh-Lekha 5785
Even though I went to bed early on Tuesday, before the election outcome was clear, I didn’t get much sleep. Try as I might — sleep meditations, visualizations, every trick I know—I couldn't get my mind to stop spinning: so much uncertainty, so much at stake for so many of us. I just couldn’t settle down, and I tossed and turned all night. I know many of you felt that way too. When I finally got...
Confronting Chaos with Silence: Noach 5785
Here’s a historical tidbit I love to recite: Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706. Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the founder of Hasidism better known as the Ba’al Shem Tov, was born eight years earlier, in 1698. Which is to say, Franklin and the Besht were contemporaries. I often mention this factoid when I teach Hasidic texts because I think that, while they emerged in different political and...
Three-Day Yontif: Bereshit 5785
In the part of the Jewish world I live in, we are approaching the third and final cycle of what are lovingly (well, maybe not entirely lovingly) referred to as "Three-Day Yontifs." An explanation: Since ancient times, Jewish communities outside the land of Israel have observed not one, but two days of yom tov--holidays on which work is prohibited--at the beginning and end of Passover, on...
All the World’s a Stage: Sukkot 5785
Last week I wrote about Yom Kippur as a quintessentially adult holiday. This week we arrive at Sukkot, a holiday very much made for children. Aside from the assembly and decoration of the sukkah itself, which many kids love to do, there's the basic notion of the sukkah that I find engages children. "You mean we build a hut and eat our meals in it? I have so many questions!" How many walls does...
Building a Sukkah of Hope
Join Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell for a short teaching for Sukkot about how constant change means that there is always a possibility for hope.
To Be Carried as a Child: Yom Kippur 5785
Years ago, when he was 7 years old, my son Micah couldn’t sleep. (He's now 19.) After a fitful hour of tossing and turning, he finally came downstairs and lay down on the sofa. And of course he was asleep within seconds. Half an hour later I picked him up to carry him back upstairs to his bed. At age 7, Micah was reaching the point where I could no longer comfortably carry him. But, perhaps...
Josh Feigelson in Conversation with Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg
We are grateful to Rabbi Irving “Yitz” Greenberg for sharing his wisdom with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg serves as the President of the J.J. Greenberg Institute for the Advancement of Jewish Life (JJGI) and as Senior Scholar in Residence at Hadar. Together with Elie Wiesel, he founded CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership and...
On Grief and Solace: Rosh Hashanah 5785
About ten years ago, I discovered an album of the poet David Whyte called "Solace: The Art of the Beautiful Question." At the time I was leading Ask Big Questions, an initiative of Hillel International I had helped to found, and so the title intrigued me. Yet even as I've transitioned to new work and new stages of life, listening to this album has become an annual ritual, part of my practice of...
Coming Home (Ki Tavo 5784)
My father, may he rest in peace, used to say that there were two vistas, two views on the road, which made him feel like he was coming home. One was driving south on US-23 towards Ann Arbor, where he lived most of his adult life, as the road slopes down towards the Huron River yielding a view of downtown and the University of Michigan. The other was heading east on Highway 1 in Israel, coming up...
A Prayer For Those Not Ready To Forgive
by Rabbi Jill Berkson Zimmerman, graduate of the IJS Clergy Leadership Program The design of this season compels us to forgive, to open our hearts, and sometimes to re-experience wounds. Some of us have suffered profound trauma, at the hand of parents, partners, or friends, They might be fresh bruises or from many years ago –They bubble below the surface, having been pushed away, but now...
Practicing Forgiveness as Surrender
by Rabbi Leora Kaye, graduate of the IJS Clergy Leadership Program (full version published on Sefaria) Why would you want to forgive someone who has wronged you? Is there any benefit to forgiving? Is there a “right” time to forgive? And what does religion have to do with it? Come to think of it, does religion have anything to do with it? Thousands of years of Jewish text and wisdom offer us...
In God We Trust (Shoftim 5784)
One of the leadership teacher Stephen Covey's most famous observations is that "relationships operate at the speed of trust." It's a line that has resonated with me for a long time. To me, trust is everything--at work, at home, in life. When I keep my promises, I feel like I'm upholding trust, depositing it in my account; when I fail to do so, I feel like I'm reducing the balance. When I have...
Open Your Hand (Re’eh 5784)
There's a neighborhood grocery store two blocks from my house. It's called Village Marketplace and, to many of us who reside in Skokie, it's one of the best things about living here. It's not a big chain, it's independently owned, and best of all, I can walk there and back in 5 minutes when we need a dozen eggs. Occasionally there are folks standing outside Village Market (locals drop the...
