Blog

While the Priestly Blessing is a central ritual at my family’s Shabbat table, that hasn’t always been the case. For whatever reason, it wasn’t part of my parents’ repertoire when I was growing up. That changed when, at age 12, I attended the bat mitzvah of a family friend and saw her parents place their hands on her head and recite the words. I told my folks, “I’d like us to do that.” Soon thereafter, my dad started blessing my brothers and me. (For whatever reason, my mom left it to him to do.) In both the relationship with my father and my relationship with my children, I have experienced real power in this ritual. Parent-child relationships aren’t easy, and Friday afternoons can be...

The other night our middle son, Micah, had a basketball game. We always try to light Hannukah candles together as a family, so we waited for him to come home. We wound up lighting the hanukkiah after 9 pm. (They won the game, btw--and he even had a three-pointer.) Natalie and I take fire safety seriously, so we wanted to make sure the flames were out before going to bed....

This coming Saturday night marks the fifth yahrtzeit, or death anniversary, of my father, Lou Feigelson z"l (pictured above with my mother during the dancing at our wedding; it's a favorite picture.)While professionally my Dad made his living in real estate and property management in our hometown of Ann Arbor, at his core he was a teacher. Like so many children of Jewish...

Like so many others, I've been struggling for words since October 7. "Ein milim," "There are no words," is the phrase many Israelis have used to greet one another. For me, it feels like this time has tested the limits of my ability to formulate words, that language is insufficient to reflect and express all the thoughts and emotions I've been having.Regular readers will...

I recently heard a podcast interview with Benjamin Wittes, the editor of a blog called Lawfare that I read every now and then. Wittes was talking about the role of context in determining the meaning of speech acts according to the law. He cited the following example: If an insurance salesman says to me, “You have a beautiful house, it would be a shame if something happened...

My oldest son, Jonah, was the first to introduce me to the contemporary idea of the "multiverse." While the concept, and even the term, have been around for centuries (Wikipedia tells me William James used it in 1895), the notion has gained particular traction in today's media. The TV show "Rick and Morty," which Jonah loves, is built on the idea of "infinite timelines,...

Twenty-five years ago, right out of college, I lived in Jerusalem for a year. While I grew up with a very strong Jewish identity, I didn't receive the kind of Jewish education that would allow me to study Talmud in the original Hebrew/Aramaic or to walk into a beit midrash and know what all the books on the shelf were, much less how to open them up and study from them. In...

When I was little, I remember I would usually wake up and come out to the kitchen to find my mother sitting there with her coffee, reading a book or the newspaper. She would often have a notebook beside her, and whatever she was reading was marked up with sticky notes. In later years, the books and sticky notes weren't there as much, and I would find her with just the...

On Monday morning a headline crossed my newsfeed: A six-year old boy in suburban Chicago had been brutally stabbed to death by his family's landlord. His mother was severely injured while trying to protect him. The story was tragic. What made it even more significant was that the boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was, like his mother, from the Palestinian community. While the...

If there's one constant to my life, it's siblinghood. From the moment I was born, I have been the youngest of three brothers. Since my second child was born, I have been the father of siblings (pictured above on a family picnic when they were little). When my brothers and I got married, I learned what it meant to have sisters.But my experience of siblinghood didn't come...

Dear friends, Like so many others, I awoke this past Shabbat morning to the heart-rending news from Israel. And like so many others, as the hours and days have unfolded, I have struggled to contain all the emotions: fear, grief, anger, confusion, gratitude for those who are keeping others safe and bringing healing to those in need. As I danced with my community on Simchat...

Like many people, I grew up with a beautiful Yom Kippur break-fast. Immediately after the end of services, my family would drive over to our family friends, the Rubinfelds. Rivka, the matriarch, always had out a delicious spread of bagels and lox and whitefish and rugelach. I remember the acidic sting of orange juice in my parched mouth, and the sensation of it landing at...

One of the many emotional moments of my year of mourning for my father came when I was building our sukkah. Sukkah-building is often a family affair, because it's so hard to do alone and it's something kids generally love to do. That was true for me growing up, and it has been true with my own children. While so many other Jewish rituals involve putting away and cleaning...

Earlier this year, my youngest son, Toby, and I watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy together. He is a fantasy genre lover, and, true to form, fell in love with the story of Frodo Baggins's long journey to Mount Doom, his struggle to carry the Ring of Power along the way, and his mission to throw the ring into the lava inside the mountain and destroy the ring once and for...