Turning 50 (Behar-Bechukotai 5786)
Happy birthday to me! I’m in the midst of turning 50. My birthday on the Jewish calendar was last week, my birthday on the Gregorian calendar is next week. As my teacher Rabbi Dov Linzer remarked when I saw him the other day, “Some people refer to that as chol hamoed,” the intermediate days of the festival. Thank you in advance for all your good wishes. Having a birthday in mid-May has long meant that I grow a year older in the midst of an emotionally rich time. Spring is in full bloom. Walking to elementary school in my neighborhood growing up, I would pass the flowering crabapple trees that always blossomed this week, loudly displaying their pink petals and spraying their sweet fragrance...
I Have Some Feedback (Emor 5786)
One of the challenges of writing a weekly essay on the Torah portion along with a weekly podcast script while also serving as the CEO of a growing organization is that there’s not much time for other writing. My first—and to date, only—book came about entirely because I wrote each chapter for IJS’s annual Text Study program in 2020-21 (and I wasn’t yet writing these weekly reflections). In recent months I’ve gotten some new inspiration for a larger project, which I’m hoping can become a book and which would focus on the idea of home and, even more, on the experience of at-homeness. Regular readers will recognize that this is a theme I come back to regularly, and it feels to me like there’s...
Imperfections
A number of years ago, I approached the High Holy Days with a great sense of inadequacy. I was keenly aware of all the ways in which I missed the mark, that I fell short of my own expectations and that I was unable to keep to my intention. It was a sobering and unpleasant realization. As I was working with this sense of inadequacy, I was looking forward to the part of the Rosh Hashanah service...
Praying with Our Feet
The other day I got together with a friend who is one of the wise advisors in my life. I told her about a particular issue I was grappling with. She shared a meditation instruction of bringing attention to the sensation of my feet on the floor and really focusing on the way gravity presses the feet down into the support of floor. As I practiced with this instruction, I felt a kind of...
The Shelter of Shabbat
The morning I wrote this greeting, I woke up very early. We had just concluded the final retreat for our second Clergy Leadership Program cohort and I was heading to the airport to return home for Shabbat. In the eastern sky there was the tiniest sliver of the crescent moon, just rising, heart-breakingly beautiful. It was just a few days before the month of Av began, with that same crescent moon...
How do I hold myself with love?
Early this spring, I traveled to California to celebrate my father’s 90th birthday. Members of my extended family from as far away as Fiji and New Zealand came to gather, and I was amazed by the connections I saw between cousins who so rarely have the opportunity to meet in person, the instant bonds of love that we offered—even though we live such different lives! One of my favorite...
Where Does Truth Live? (Within Us.)
The truth is that telling the truth is not so easy. The sages of the midrash wryly told that when God decided to create human beings, the ministering angels broke into factions. Justice and Lovingkindness were in favor of this new creation, saying that people would do acts of tzedek and chesed. Peace objected that they would engage in war and Truth protested that humans would be filled with...
Now is the time for spiritual practice.
Perhaps the author Paul Auster said it the most succinctly: “It occurred to me that the inner and the outer could not be separated except by doing great damage to the truth.” One of the most radical intuitions that can emerge from contemplative spiritual practice is how profoundly everything is interconnected. There are so many ways we can talk about this experience. Jewish mystical texts...
Embodied Practice for Hanukkah
There is a mystical teaching that the light of the first day of Creation is hidden away in this world as the Or HaGanuz, the Hidden Light. This light is no ordinary light. The Or HaGanuz brings the heat of timeless, limitless energy that penetrates and permeates matter and animates our physical bodies. It also exists as light waves of thought and feeling within our more subtle bodies of emotion...
The Light in the Darkness
Many of us have come to recognize the symbolic power of the lights of Hanukkah. Hanukkah begins on the 25th of Kislev, which means around the last five days of the lunar month. Particularly when the festival falls later in December, it coincides with the winter solstice, the longest night of the year. When you combine the longest nights with waning of the moon at the end of the lunar month, when...
This is Enough
Imagine how we might respond if someone said to us, as Joseph does to Pharoah in next week’s Torah portion, Miketz: כט הִנֵּה שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים בָּאוֹת שָׂבָע גָּדוֹל בְּכָל־אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם: ל וְקָמוּ שֶׁבַע שְׁנֵי רָעָב אַחֲרֵיהֶן וְנִשְׁכַּח כָּל־הַשָּׂבָע בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם וְכִלָּה הָרָעָב אֶת־הָאָרֶץ: לא וְלֹא־יִוָּדַע הַשָּׂבָע בָּאָרֶץ מִפְּנֵי הָרָעָב הַהוּא אַחֲרֵי־כֵן כִּי־כָבֵד הוּא מְאֹד...
What Now? A Practice for the Aftermath of the Election
There have been so many beautiful and helpful responses to the aftermath of the election. I would like to offer something a little different: In my practice recently, I have become aware of certain universal human experiences that seem to function like fields of energy. The experiences can be love and trust, anger and fear. When these “fields” manifest in our lives, they take on a garb, the...
Interconnected: An Intention for Elul
Scene one: I went to the local farmer’s market and bought some berries. I brought them home and when I opened the box to finish my lunch with fresh fruit, I noticed that the whole package was laced with mold. I was annoyed; the berries weren’t cheap! I grabbed my purse and the box and marched back up to the market in the hot afternoon sun. I got in line at the stand, only to be told by the woman...
Tisha B’Av in Turbulent Times
It’s getting to the point where I dread checking the news or signing onto Facebook. The spiking of violence in so many parts of the world, including on our own streets, the unbridled vitriol, the screaming without listening, the hot rage – perhaps I am getting old and myopic, but I don’t remember seeing this much venom before. I feel my heart close up, pressure in my throat. It is so profoundly...
A Summer of Delight
Last week I had the opportunity to be in Los Angeles for Father’s Day. I was delighted to celebrate with my family by going up to a picnic area by a small creek - complete with a waterfall - in the San Gabriel Mountains. When I was a child, we would often escape the heat and smog of Southern California by going to this lovely canyon with its white granite walls, the cold honey-colored water,...
When we listen deeply, what can we hear?
It seems to me that Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates the revelation of Torah at Mt Sinai, is an extraordinary opportunity for us to explore listening as part of building our capacity to hear God’s voice. For some, that might not be such an intuitive suggestion. Even if we “believe in” God, which not everyone does, the idea of hearing God’s voice seems archaic. But it invites intriguing...
Looking for a Mindful Pesach
In my experience, Passover is a holiday that often fails to reach its potential to help us wake up to the power of transformation. The form of the holiday is so overwhelming: the occasionally obsessive attention to food and cleaning; trying to find the right balance of keeping everyone engaged and interested at the seder; the joys and pressures of hosting and being hosted. And yet, Passover...
Responding to Darkness
Is it just me or does the world seem particularly dark these days? I remember periods when everything seemed flush with potential and vibrant with possibility, but these times seem heavy with a kind of dread. We continually see cruelty and bloodshed splashed across screens of all sizes; in so many of our personal circles we have experienced loss and displacement as well. And this is not to...
From Chamber to Chamber
From Chamber to Chamber Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell דע שיש חדרי תורה, ומי שזוכה להם כשמתחיל לחדש בתורה, הוא נכנס בחדרים, ונכנס מחדר לחדר ומחדר לחדר, כי בכל חדר וחדר יש כמה וכמה פתחים לחדרים אחרים...אבל הכלל שאסור לטעות בעצמו, לסבור שכבר בא אל ההשגה הראוי, כי אם יסבור כן ישאר שם חס ושלום "Know that there are chambers of Torah, and one merits them when one begins to renew Torah; one enters...
Hitlamdut
“Meditation? Me? Why would I want to spend time sitting and focusing on my breath? I’m not the type…” When I remember that version of myself, five years ago—someone who was not the “type” to meditate—I smile and am filled with gratitude. Gratitude toward my former self, for staying curious, which enabled me to follow a deeper yearning for connection. And, gratitude to the Institute for providing...