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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 passed away there was a lot of stuff in the house that had to be cleared out and repaired in order to get the place in condition to sell. That was a big enough job on its own, and it became significantly more complicated when the pandemic hit about 15 months after he died, especially because my...

On Wednesday night I had to run to the drug store. We were out of antihistamine, and, being springtime, the air in Chicago is thick with stuff that makes me sneeze. There's a Walgreens around the corner from our house. As I walked up to the entrance, I saw a man holding a sign in Spanish, but headlined with "Please help." He had three young children with him, the oldest appearing to be no more...

Last month I was honored to share some words of Torah during a plenary session at the convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis in Chicago, alongside two wonderful colleagues: Rabbi Yael Vurgan and Dr. Claire Sufrin. The three of us were asked to spend 15 minutes each sharing a text that has helped us cultivate resilience over these recent difficult months.  The text I taught came...

The other day I found myself thinking back five years, to the first Pesach we celebrated during the Covid pandemic. I remembered the strange feeling of loneliness and isolation. I remembered how families struggled to figure out whether and how they could do "Zoom seders" (and, frequently, how they would manage to get less tech-savvy relatives into the "room"). I remembered the unusual experience...

A few years ago I received an email from Joe Reimer, a professor emeritus of Jewish education at Brandeis, with a request: to be part of a small working group supported by the Mandel Center for Jewish Education at Brandeis that would focus on the teaching and learning of Jewish spirituality. Certainly because of the people who would be involved, and possibly because of my own predilection to say...

I'll begin with a confession: I am a shoplifter. Well, I was a shoplifter. As a little kid. My Mom and I were shopping at the grocery store. I saw a greeting card I really liked (I remember it being blue) and I wanted to buy it. For whatever reason, my Mom said no. I surreptitiously took it anyway and hid it inside my shirt. My Mom discovered it when we got home. After a serious talking-to about...

I've written here previously about my mother's journey with Alzheimer's disease, which officially began seven years ago but which has likely been going on longer than that. For me, the first visible sign was when she had a hard time reading a children's book to our youngest son, who was then 3 or 4 years old. Since then, the path has taken her through, among other things, a gradual reduction in...

Our family dog, Phoebe, is a 50ish pound Plott Hound (the official state dog of North Carolina, it turns out). Plotts are hunting dogs, and Phoebe certainly likes to be active. She requires at least two long walks a day, and often more. And she will frankly take as much stimulation as we can offer. Sometimes I play a game with Phoebe: I dangle a rope in front of her, just out of her reach. She...

While social media is, generally speaking, a wasteland of toxic drek, there are still some moments when its original hopeful potential glimmers beneath the surface. One such moment occurred for me in recent weeks, as I began to engage with an old acquaintance from my youth whose politics are pretty different from mine. He had posted something about the hypocrisy of political leaders. I couldn't...

Regular readers will know that the Boy Scouts were a big part of life in my family growing up. My grandfather became an Eagle Scout in 1924. My father, two older brothers and I were all Eagle Scouts too. It was through Scouting that I learned formative lessons about life and leadership, camping and hiking, citizenship and first aid. But more than anything, I think Scouting helped instill in me a...

It was cold on Presidents Day, and many of our friends had gone to warmer places for the long weekend. So my son Toby and I wound up at the movies. We saw "Mufasa," which tells the backstory to "The Lion King:" how the orphaned Mufasa (this is a Disney movie after all—gotta have your orphan story) is adopted by a new family and emerges into a great leader. Love, betrayal, all the the usual...

The beginning of this month marked five years since I began working at IJS. Half a decade later, I am grateful that I continue to wake up every day and get to do this amazing work with these amazing colleagues—including our professionals, our volunteer leaders, and the thousands of people who participate in our community in one way or another. That includes you, as a reader of these reflections....

I don't have much occasion to go in the backyard during the winter. For starters, January is pretty cold in Chicago, and the dog is perfectly fine if we just let her out the door to do her business and then run back in. But the other day it was a little warmer, and Phoebe seemed like she would enjoy playing fetch. So I bundled up and took her out. After a few rounds of catch and release with a...