Emor 5785: Da Pope
Last Thursday and Friday were, hands down, the best days in Chicago social media history. Why? Because, in the words of the ginormous headline in the Sun-Times Friday morning, the papal conclave had elected "Da Pope." Robert Prevost, born on Chicago's south side, became, overnight, Pope Leo XIV--and Chicago, where I live, was here for it. The memes were flying: The Wiener Circle, one of Chicago's many beloved (treif) sausage vendors, posted an image of their marquee: "Canes nostros ipse comedit" (translation: "He has eaten our dogs"). "Chicago produced a pope before a quarterback who throws for 4,000 yards" (a reference to the Bears' long and miserable history of quarterbacks). "God bless...
Hearing the Divine, in Silence
The holiday of Shavuot, commemorating the revelation of Torah at Mount Sinai, begins this year Sunday night, June 1. It is striking that despite the cacophonous scene of revelation described in the Torah in Exodus 19, there is a stream within Jewish tradition that emphasizes silence as the context for intimate encounter with the Divine. Rabbinic tradition offers an interpretation that at Mount Sinai, the people heard only the first two of the Ten Commandments: "I am YHVH your God" and "you shall have no other gods beside Me.” A Hasidic tradition asserts that at Sinai the people “heard” only the first letter of the first word—that is, the silent letter aleph.¹ We can understand the...
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...
Politics (Ekev 5784)
Like many of you reading this, I expect, the most powerful moment of this week's Democratic National Convention for me was the speech of Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, one of the 109 remaining hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Jon, and especially Rachel, have tragically become the most recognizable spokespeople for the hostage families. Seeing the tears in...