Pre-Passover Pausing in the Kitchen Practice
For those who observe the practice of kashering our kitchens for Passover, this process can induce a lot of excitement, but it can also engender a small or great deal of anxiety for many. Changing over the dishes; removing every scrap or loaf of chametz/ leavened goods from the fridge, the freezer, the pantry; from the floor (tiny crumbs count!); from the oven and the stove; from the seat cushions and at the backs of cabinets and drawers, and more–these physical tasks are not easy nor simple. There are a multitude of rules regarding the physical aspect of cleaning the kitchen for Passover.
There are also the mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions of these intensive preparations of turning your kitchen space upside down each spring. How do you mentally and emotionally relate to this work of cleaning, clearing, re-organizing, releasing and throwing away, buying and bringing in kosher for Passover items related to food storage and preparation, and eating?
For me, and perhaps for you, the kitchen in general is a multi-use space in which many multivalent activities take place. Whether you live alone or with a partner, friends, family members, or pets, you might spend more time in the kitchen doing things rather than being quiet and simply resting and sitting still. And those things might be charged with emotions of excitement, anxiety, pleasure, fear, shame, grief, stress, and more.
You might feel obligation: sweep the floor; empty the dishrack or dishwasher; cut the vegetables; clean the drain; put the groceries away….You might feel happiness: the smells, tastes, colors and textures of food and drink you enjoy fill that space. You might feel nothing: rushing to get the thing prepared, eating on the run, throwing the dish towel on the counter and closing the door behind you as you hold the go-mug of coffee in one hand, your work bag and keys in the other. If you experience any food-related allergies or struggle with food and body image issues, addictions, or other emotional stresses centered around food and eating, being in the kitchen may cause mild or serious discomfort.
Whatever they are, there are likely many emotions and activities that we center in the kitchen space. Think of the recent Republican response to the President’s State of the Union address that took place from the speaker’s kitchen, in which she referenced its sacred centrality in the life of her family as a central gathering place for having serious discussions. In the midst of so many ways in which the Passover holiday is filled with emotions, and its preparations too, charged in so many loud and busy ways of doing, it can be hard to slow down, relax, and bring mindful attention and meaning to all of this emotional and physical work. One small act of liberation can be to find freedom from the habituated doing in this space, and practice being, kindly and differently, right there in the presence of the fridge, freezer and stove, as you prepare for Passover.
The following practice can help you slow down and create some space between yourself and the usual business and habituated ways of being in the kitchen in which you need to get or do something. You can prepare yourself to begin your chametz clearing and cleaning from a place of mental and emotional quiet and stillness akin to a Shabbat state of mind:
Before you begin your Passover cleaning, find a comfortable place to sit in your kitchen. After several breaths to feel the floor under your feet and the seat under your bottom, bring awareness to the sense of physical sight. If you are not able to see physically, bring awareness to the senses you recruit to locate yourself in this space.
Let your eyes (or your hearing or hands through touch) begin to just receive the space you are in, just as it is. Let your eyes rest on some object in the room. Just be with this mixer or frying pan. No need to do anything to it or with it. Let the cabinet just be in the present with you as “cabinet”. Just this. Let your eyes scan slowly, taking in and finding your attention focused on, dropping into, as it were, relating to the object in a passive or simply gazing kind of way. You don’t need to do anything to or with it.
Notice physically if you feel the urge to get up and throw something away, or put something back, or if you suddenly feel the impulse to eat the apple or banana or cookie you see on the counter. Try to just notice all the impulses to move and do in this room. Let yourself be a witness to this space as a quiet, still environment where you can just rest in being, right here, right in this kitchen.
Notice your emotions as they arise and pass. Can you be with the energy that a feeling might hold? Pay attention to the thoughts that come and go. You may have a thought: I need to put aluminum foil on those stove burners–aak!–I need to go back to the store to get more foil first. And that thought might immediately be followed by an emotion such as anxiety, or fear or worry, or impatience (forget this contemplation practice, I’ve got to DO stuff now!). Allow yourself to practice staying with the sensations, feelings and thoughts as they come and go, and bring awareness back to simply looking. Simply being with this moment, in this kitchen space.
You can practice bringing kind attention to these waves of internal stimulation, and just allowing yourself to rest quietly, in relative stillness, in this kitchen, with nothing that you need to clean, produce, fix, throw away, clear out, wipe down, tape up, or otherwise change. Just bring your awareness to the colors, shadows and light, the “thingness” of the things around you and of yourself in this space.
After seven to ten minutes of awareness practice in your kitchen, notice if you sense any shift in your being. When I practice this each year before beginning Passover cleaning, I usually note some greater ease, sometimes even peacefulness, and a rush of compassion for our humanity as Jews who undertake in our various ways this aspiration-for-liberation-inspired-kitchen-makeover each spring. See what you notice.
And if, after beginning or at any point during the intensive doing that you immerse in as you prepare your kitchen for Passover, you can notice if the heart rate is increasing and your mind is wandering or if your anxiety is rising; know you can pause. Take that seat again, and simply stop the doing. Return your eyes or hands or ears to awareness of yourself in this space that is inherently ok just as it is, and so are you.
Perhaps this kind of pausing practice is a taste of liberatory consciousness that you can bring to this moment, and every moment, taking a seat in whatever “kitchen” you find yourself in. Simply be in it, just as it is; letting your breathing, and sitting, and the space itself be enough without more potchkying (technical word meaning fussing or messing with something more than necessary, trying to improve it). And perhaps, into this kind of spacious awareness, you can taste awareness of the sacredness of this moment, this activity, this season, just as you are. So may it be!
Pesach and the Omer: An Opportunity for a Spiritual Reset
Especially in this deeply fraught and challenging year, Pesach – and the seven week period leading to Shavuot – offers all a precious opportunity for a “spiritual reset.”
This part of the Jewish yearly cycle resonates powerfully with our mindfulness practice, which invites us to explore our inner life with curiosity, growing in awareness of our reactive, fear-based habits. Attending with curious, nonjudgmental attention to the truth of each moment (hitlamdut), we witness more clearly the energy of this “shadow” in our mind, emotions, and body.
And approaching this inner Mitzrayim (constriction) or frightened ego with compassion rather than harsh judgment, we experience greater spaciousness—greater freedom to shift that energy in a more wholesome or holy direction. We move with greater ease through the mouth of the Sea, into the midbar, the open wilderness. We are free.
In particular, Pesach invites us to cultivate greater awareness of the truthfulness in our thoughts and speech, to expand our freedom to direct the sacred gift of language to promoting Emet/Truth in the world.
The Hebrew word Pesach can be parsed into two distinct words—peh sach, or “speaking mouth.” According to a Hasidic understanding, Passover represents the liberation of speech. As slaves, the Israelites could only utter a raw, anguished cry (Exodus 2:23); in freedom, they could sing exultantly the “Song of the Sea” (Exodus 15:1-19).
In the swirling, powerful emotions of our times, even those of us who profess outrage at daily distortions of language and disregard for facts may discover ourselves “bending the truth” to suit our own preconceptions and biases. Mindfulness can help us catch ourselves more often when fear generates rationalizing thoughts or tendencies to fudge the truth. We may notice constrictions leading us to avoid “inconvenient” truths that challenge our preferred version of reality. Instead of harshly criticizing such inclinations, we can honor our fear, practice self-compassion, and notice options to promote truthfulness.
As a specific practice leading up to Pesach, consider the teaching of the prophet Zechariah, who urges us to “speak the truth with your neighbor; judge with truth, justice, and peace in your gates” (Zechariah 8:16). Think of the “gates” as the place within us from which thoughts, emotions, and sensations arise to consciousness. Notice reactions arising, and the speech these reactions might generate. Pause and practice sh’tikah, silence. Consider these questions: Do I really need to say these words? Are they true? Are they just? Do they lead to shalom, to wholeness or wholesomeness?
As we approach Pesach, the liberation of speech, may we be freed from inner constrictions distorting our view of reality. May we pause before speaking, texting, writing or posting, and discern whether to remain silent or to express ourselves through words reflecting our highest and truest selves May Emet, the Divine quality of truth, flow freely through us, and fill the cracks of this fractured world.
Rising Above the Waves of Fear and Anger After October 7
Originally published on Times of Israel on March 27, 2024
These are fearful times that try our souls. Our nervous systems are overwhelmed by the ongoing trauma of October 7, the devastation of the Israel-Gaza war, surging antisemitism, political turmoil, and more. Threatened on so many fronts, our default inclination as human beings is to speak and act reactively, or remain frozen in silence.
Our fear-based reactivity may feel good in the short term. Anger may temporarily dull our pain, grief, and anxiety, and create a short-term sense of safety. But over time our habitual reactions inevitably are revealed as clumsy and unwise, often destructive of others and ourselves. In such heated times, we often behave as our own worst enemy – even while feeling powerless to stop and change course.
It’s hard to act wisely when we are pummeled by waves of strong emotion. We struggle to hit the pause button – to stop, collect ourselves, notice other options, and choose the wise course. The eye of the hurricane, a place of calm and clarity in the midst of turbulence–a place we all need so much right now–eludes us.
Where can we find that place of calm and clarity? Jewish tradition teaches us that that calm place begins in our own minds and hearts–that it is always available to us, if we can access it.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space,” wrote the Holocaust survivor and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl. “In that space is our power to choose. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” Whenever we act or speak immediately in reaction to external stimuli, without that much-needed space, we act from habit, a form of enslavement. There is no freedom, no choice, and no growth.
Jewish tradition and practice provides an antidote to reactivity
Shabbat provides us with an experience of stillness and quiet that is always available to us. Shabbat allows us to be rather than act. The fog of our mind can clear; our emotions can be fully felt, honored, and allowed to move through us. We can see more clearly and discern more wisely.
But Shabbat doesn’t only happen every seven days. We can bring Shabbat consciousness into our lives all the time, in every moment. Regardless of our level of traditional observance, we each can “keep Shabbat” by expanding the space between stimulus and response, pausing to breathe and suspend judgment – even for a moment. Some might describe this very Jewish practice in contemporary terms as mindfulness practice.
Judaism has a spiritual practice ideal for times like these: tikkun middot, a Jewish practice for developing character traits and aligning actions with our values. Tikkun middot practice integrates basic principles of Jewish mindfulness or “Shabbat awareness” with close attention to essential soul/ethical traits like loving connection, setting wise boundaries, humility, courage, and gratitude. Based on Judaism’s core principle that every human being is created in the Divine image, we come “factory-equipped” with these soul/ethical qualities.
Tikkun middot practice helps us insert and expand the space between stimulus and response. From within that space, we can more easily access our sacred traits so that rather than reacting instinctively from fear, we can freely choose a wise, sacred response representing our authentic selves, more aligned with our sacred values.
An ongoing Jewish spiritual practice can help us keep our balance – and tikkun middot is the ideal practice for trying times such as these. It can help us avoid falling prey to our baser instincts. It can help us maintain connection to sacred values and be true to who we are even when we are under duress.
The Omer: A Time for Tikkun Middot
The seven-week period linking Passover and Shavuot is known in Jewish tradition as the Omer, a time devoted to spiritual growth and ethical maturation. On Passover, we leave the enslavements of reactive habits. Over seven weeks, we shed these manifestations of slavery, growing daily in our capacity to make free choices more aligned with our essential self. On Shavuot, we arrive at Mount Sinai prepared to act freely from the moral wisdom with which we are imbued.
This spring, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality will offer a wonderful opportunity for engaging in just this process of spiritual and ethical growth – Awareness in Action: Cultivating Character through Mindfulness and Middot, a synchronous, online program in tikkun middot practice. Participants will join a supportive community of practice which helps them more consistently align their inner values with how they show up in the world.
Awareness in Action participants learn how to “practice Shabbat” in their daily lives by developing the capacity to hit the pause button before speaking or acting reactively and unwisely. Each week, they immerse in supported practice of a middah drawn from the theme of the respective week of the Omer: (1) Chesed, loving connection; (2) Gevurah, setting wise boundaries; (3) Anavah, balancing self and others; (4) Zerizut, acting promptly and persistently; (5) Hodayah, gratitude for life as it is; (6) Tzedek, seeking out and manifest what is fair, just, and right; and (7) Sh’mirat HaDibbur, wise communication. The program includes an additional post-Shavuot week of practice for fostering the middah of Emunah, faithfulness or steadfastness.
All materials are provided on a convenient online platform and supported by weekly live practice sessions I will host, and which will be led by guest faculty Rabbi Tamara Cohen, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife, and Rabbi Aaron Weininger.
As Jews have throughout our history, we need now to draw upon the wisdom of our tradition and practices to buoy us and help us steer wisely through the storms of our individual and collective lives, to bring us and future generations to a better time and place. The approaching Passover, fraught with emotion, affords us all a precious opportunity to free ourselves from the enslavement of reactivity, to remember and return to who we truly are, and to choose wise pathways aligned with the divinity within us.
Mitzvah Means Connection: Tzav 5784
The other day I listened to a talk by one of my favorite teachers of mindfulness, Gil Fronsdal, about the war in Israel and Gaza. I listen to Gil’s meditations and short talks several times a week. I’m drawn to the clarity, simplicity, and depth of his teaching. I find that practicing with him early in the morning, or while I’m walking the dog, is helpful.
Like his previous talk on the war last fall, in this talk I was impressed and gratified to hear Gil acknowledge and embrace the humanity of everyone who has suffered, is suffering, and continues to suffer because of it: Israelis, Palestinians, and all of us who care about and are connected to them. There were, predictably, some things I might have phrased differently, or some places I found myself disagreeing. But on the whole, I found it good and helpful.
Towards the end of the talk, Gil said something that has stuck with me. I’ll paraphrase: A lot of people approach me with demands–to sign this or that, to condemn this group or that group, to “stand with” these people and “stand against” those. And Gil said (quoting now): “I don’t operate that way.” He didn’t say this with an edge, but just matter of fact. Instead, he said, he responds to requests, invitations. Demands just won’t work.
I’ve been lingering on that line for a couple of weeks. On one level, it reflects a commonplace among meditation teachers (imagine me speaking in meditation teacher voice now): “And now, if it’s comfortable for you, the invitation is to… gently close your eyes” or “allow your awareness to settle on the breath” or whatever the next part of the practice is.
This is actually such a common expression that we joke about it sometimes at work. It’s foundational to mindfulness practice, the notion that we are all free to enter and leave the practice as we like. We are here not because anyone is forcing us, but because we have decided to be here and do this in this moment–and we can decide in the next moment not to. We have free will, and no one can take that away from us. Thus we shouldn’t presuppose that we or anyone else is bound to do anything. And so, no demands–only invitations and requests.
This is one of the places where Judaism as a mindfulness practice can get complicated. Why? Because at the heart of a life of Torah is the concept and experience of mitzvot, traditionally translated as commandments. Biblical and Rabbinic teaching is suffused with the idea that the Divine commands or demands of us to obey these rules–and will reward us for doing so and punish us for acting otherwise.
This approach works for some people, but it doesn’t work for others. For me, this orientation was particularly useful as a young person, as my fear of being judged–by others, by what I understood God to be, by my own conscience–helped push me into study and behaviors that created a groove in my heart and mind: Shabbat, kashrut, praying, hours and hours learning Hebrew, Aramaic, and our people’s extraordinary textual tradition. I felt good about how I was spending my time because I felt I was living in alignment with what I understood that God commanded me to do.
But at a certain point, that stopped working so well for me. I found something missing in my inner life, as though I were performing a set of roles rather than genuinely living in a way that integrated my outer actions with inner sensations. And that led me, over many years, to studying Hasidut, experimenting with new forms of prayer, and eventually to IJS’s Clergy Leadership Program (applications are open for our next cohort–please share with rabbis and cantors you love!) and into the practice I engage in, teach, and help develop today.
I bring all this up because the name of this week’s Torah portion, Tzav, invites us to reflect on this question of the meaning of mitzvah (tzav is a verb form of the noun, mitzvah). Rashi, citing the midrash, observes that tzav connotes zerizut, alacrity, as if God is saying, “Perform this commandment right away–bring energy to it, don’t dilly dally.” That fits well within a framework of externalized motivation: Get this done quickly so that you can earn the reward (and avoid the punishment). A mitzvah, in this context, continues to be (or at least seems to be) a behavior that a Higher Power commands us to do, backed up by overwhelming force.
But there are other ways to understand mitzvah. The Hasidic masters, drawing on the Zohar, routinely play up the aspect of mitzvah as connection, e.g. mitzvot are the means by which “The Ineffable [expresses] desire that we connect, embrace the Divine, through holiness” (Sefat Emet Bo 1874–there are many more examples). This framework does not necessitate jettisoning the notion of mitzvah as duty or obligation. But, for me anyway, it has the effect of wrapping that heavy notion of commandedness in a softer envelope of love (or, perhaps, the harsher approach is the package, and the love is the soft center; or, really truly, neither is inside or outside–they’re both deeply intertwined). As I’ve continued on my own spiritual and religious journey, that has been profoundly important and helpful.
This approach can get tricky for me, though, if it leads me to experience mitzvot as entirely voluntary. I’m not willing to say that everything is an invitation, because I believe that I, and we, have moral, ethical, and spiritual duties and responsibilities. I can’t, with a straight face, understand Torah, halakha, and Judaism as simply a response to a series of invitations; it is also a response to a set of demands.
Yet I think Gil Fronsdal is right: Demands are not always, or perhaps even often, effective. Why? Because so many of us experience our lives as a set of choices we make, grounded in freedom of thought and action. So the notion that God or a politician or an activist on social media demands of me that I espouse this position or take that action–can be experienced as a categorical error: Who gives you the right to tell me what to think or do? It would be far more effective to engage in a good faith conversation and enable both of us to speak, listen, and make up our minds.
This is an experience I think a lot of folks have run into vis a vis mitzvot and Judaism. Yet if we can ground simultaneously in an understanding of mitzvah as both commandment and connection (imagine popularizing the phrase, “Mitzvah means connection!”), I think we can open up a rich and deep relationship with Torah, Jewish life, and the Holy Blessed One. That is what I’m trying to do in my own life, and it’s what we try to do at IJS all the time. If you’re not already on that journey, I hope you’ll consider joining us (no, actually–I’m demanding that you join us; just kidding.)
Josh’s Friday Reflections
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Purim 5784: Quit Rage
When my son Toby was seven or eight years old, we watched the Revenge of the Sith, the third of the Star Wars “prequel” movies—the one that tells the story of how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader (spoiler alert, I guess—but, really?). In the climactic scene, as Anakin is about to battle his master Obi-Wan Kenobi, his eyes are yellow with rage. He has been overtaken by anger. He shouts at Obi-Wan, “I hate you!” At this, Toby turned to me and said—in the way that only a sweet 8-year old who goes to a school with a strong social-emotional curriculum can—”Ooh, hate is such a strong word!”
It may sound trite to say, but I think it’s actually remarkable that, in my 47 years, I have been blessed not to experience hateful rage very much. The vast, vast majority of my experiences have been characterized by emotions and states that are peaceful, nonviolent, and even loving. But perhaps because of that, I can vividly remember the moments when rage has been present—both the rage of others that I’ve witnessed and rage that has arisen in me and caused me to lose control. In the former case, they are generally moments that have caused pain in me even through the mere fact of observing them; in the latter, they are, uniformly, the moments in my life I most regret.
We think of Purim as a happy holiday, filled with costumes and yummy things to eat. But the truth is, at the beating heart of this holiday is a story of rage, hatred, fear, generally poor emotional regulation, and the consequences those strong negative emotions can have when channeled into violent, state-sanctioned power.
The word heima, rage, forms a throughline of the Purim story. It appears six times in Esther: When the king becomes angry that Vashti won’t come (1:12) and when that rage finally subsides (2:1); when Haman sees that Mordechai won’t bow to him (3:5 and again at 5:9); when Esther reveals Haman is out to destroy her and her people (7:7) and when his rage subsides after Haman is hanged (7:10). In each of these cases, a powerful man experiences something that upsets him—something that seems to undermine his sense of control and self-worth, perhaps—and he is unable to control his anger. There is something childlike and petulant about these incidents, something reminiscent of that young Anakin Skywalker who can’t manage the strong sensations of pride, feeling wronged and unloved (and, in Anakin’s case, probably abandoned as well).
And like Anakin Skywalker, in each case in Esther, the powerful man, whether Achashverosh or Haman, flies off the handle into a literally murderous rage and then codifies that rage into state-sanctioned violence: killing the queen (and then, grotesquely, effectively kidnapping and imprisoning the young women of the empire until he found the one who most pleased him—all under cover of law); ordering a massive, state-authorized pogrom on the Jews and constructing a state-authorized gallows for Mordechai; killing Haman by the lawful order of the king. In case my point isn’t already clear: this is not a children’s story.
Instead, I think it is at least in part a story that comes to help us reflect on questions about rage and power (and gender: see Rabbi Jericho Vincent’s incredible new rendering of the Megillah for more). Such questions are, of course, always present, whether we are aware of them or not, whether we like to acknowledge them or not. One of our key developmental tasks in childhood and adolescence is learning how to modulate the strong negative feelings we can experience that might impel us toward anger, rage, and violence, and instead make calmer, wiser, more peaceful choices. And the Megillah is even astute enough to layer in the ways in which the experience or threat of violence can itself have traumatic impacts on a collective group, which can then lead to their own imagined or enacted revenge fantasies (this is the story of chapter 8).
Jewish mindfulness practice is all about disrupting this escalator of reactivity and instead increasing the space between stimulus and response. It is about cultivating da’at, attentive awareness, as evidenced in the pivotal line Mordechai writes to Esther: mi yodeah im la’et kazot higaat lamalchut, who knows—who has da’at, is mindfully aware—but perhaps it was precisely for this moment that you attained the throne!
Esther, of course, is the character who has the most to fear—”if I perish, I perish.” Through what I take to be a practice of mindfulness—what is she doing for those three days of fasting and praying if not creating more space between stimulus and response?—she overcomes that fear to make an enormously courageous, history-altering choice. Unlike her husband the king, she does not seek to dull her pain through drinking, partying, and carousing. Unlike Haman, she is not so conceited that she can only think of herself. As her name implies, she is, perhaps, concealed even from herself, but she ultimately emerges as an exemplar of mindful self-awareness that grounds her courageous speech and action.
This Purim, when so many of us are living with fear and trauma; when our media ecosystem thrives on prompting our most reactive behaviors; when too many are acting in ways that seem anything but mindful, wise, or courageous—may we renew our commitment to our spiritual practice for the sake of reducing suffering, healing pain, and fostering peace.
Josh’s Friday Reflections
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Every Friday morning, IJS President & CEO Rabbi Josh Feigelson shares a short reflection on the week in preparation for Shabbat. Josh weaves together personal experience, mindfulness practice, and teachings from the weekly Torah portion in a uniquely accessible and powerful way. Sign up to receive Josh’s weekly reflections here.
Factory Reset: Mishpatim 5784
As I'm regularly privileged to do, I spent part of this first week of February with 50 rabbis and cantors, some of the 530 alumni of our IJS clergy cohort programs, during our annual Hevraya retreat in Simi Valley, California. First and...
Homeward Bound: Yitro 5784
In some of my recent morning meditation sits, I've noticed a feeling of sadness and grief arising. Yes, of course, there's plenty of cause for sadness and grief in the world and amongst the Jewish people. But this grieving was coming up from a...
Aging Well (Beshallach 5784)
In a casual conversation the other day with my dear friend Marvin Israelow, our board chair at IJS and someone nearly 30 years my senior, I shared with him that one of the many blessings of my job is being in the presence of so many people who...
Turn, and Be Turned: A Mercy Unique and Unpredictable
When my son, who has autism, was young, I took him to synagogue on Rosh HaShanah so he could hear the shofar blasts. Listening to the shofar being blown was a physical, sacred focal point on this High Holy Day, and I wanted him to feel included in this...
Getting Tefillined: Bo 5784
For the last decade or so, my family's winter vacation has been a time to get together with my wife's sister and her husband. She's a diplomat, so they're often stationed in interesting places (and have free housing to offer us). And when...
Vaera 5784: Pressing Pause
When I first started at IJS just about four years ago, one of the good pieces of advice I received was to hire an executive coach. Robin Bernstein, who had served as our interim executive director before I started, stood out to me as a perfect...
Crying It Out (Vayigash 5784)
I finally watched "Barbie" this week. I was on the plane, heading home after an intensive four days of work, too exhausted to do much of anything else. So, the movies. If you haven't seen "Barbie" yet, here's my encouragement to do so. And if...
Remembering the Small Jars
In this brief reflection Rabbi Sam Feinsmith invites us to consider how we might kindle an inner light during this dark time by remembering to pay attention and practice compassion for ourselves and others in small ways that can really add up.
The Spiritual Practice of Revealing Hidden Light
“Darkness is your candle,” wrote the great Sufi poet Rumi. “You must have shadow and light source both.”
IJS Alumni Team Up for New Book on Daily Psalms as a Spiritual Practice
Mazal tov to Rabbi Debra Robbins of Temple Emanuel in Dallas TX, an alum of the IJS Clergy Leadership Program and member of the Hevraya (our clergy alumni), who has written a wonderful new book: “New Each Day: A Spiritual Practice for Reading Psalms” (published by and available for sale from the CCAR Press). Based on her previous book on using Psalm 27 as a basis for spiritual practice leading up to the High Holidays, “New Each Day” guides readers to engage with the shir shel yom, the “psalm of the day” as a daily spiritual practice.
Beginnings and Endings (Mikketz 5784)
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...
Beaming Light (Vayeshev-Hanukkah 5784)
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...
