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The emotional summit of my spiritual year comes at the end of Yom Kippur. The liturgy for that moment is utterly unique, something we do at no other time of the year: Responsively crying out the Shema and then, seven times, "Adonai hu haelohim," "YHVH is God." Then, when we've reached the peak, the shofar sounds for a final time and we break out into an ecstatic dance as we sing, "L'shanah haba'ah b'yerushalaim habenuyah," "Next year in a rebuilt Jerusalem."  While I and the people surrounding me have been fasting for 25 hours, we don't seem to feel exhausted, but rather exultant: light as air, high on the palpable spiritual energy and presence we've tapped into. It's a moment I try to...

One of my favorite parts of Shabbat is reading the New Yorker. It's the only time during the week I can sit for an hour or two and just read, uninterrupted by demands of work or family. And as I told my eldest son recently, while college certainly helped with my own writing, it was in reading the New Yorker that I really learned how to write. So I find those Shabbat mornings when I'm sitting at...

Nearly twenty years ago my family and I moved to Evanston, Illinois. I had just been ordained a month earlier, our son Micah had just been born two weeks prior, and we moved into an empty condo apartment two blocks from the Northwestern University Hillel, where I had taken a job as the campus rabbi. Natalie and I had rented apartments in New York up until then, and this was the first place we...

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...

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...

One of the main reasons Natalie and I moved to Skokie eleven years ago was so that our children would have other kids to play with on Shabbat afternoon. We had previously lived in Evanston, which had a wonderful but very small shomer Shabbat community. There were basically the same few kids, and no one else at our children's grade levels. When Toby came along, we realized we wanted a different...

I travel frequently for work. My checklist of things to do before I leave home includes not only packing undershirts and a toothbrush, but also emptying the compost bin that sits next to our sink. I seem to be the member of my family who can stand the smell the easiest. So before I get in the taxi to the airport, I dump the compost into the larger bin outside. I therefore think about the compost...

On Monday night, for the first time since before I had children (meaning at least 21 years ago), I went to the opera. Not just any opera, but the premiere of a new production of Verdi's La Forza del Destino at the Met--a production that lasts four hours and involves a huge cast and elaborate sets. And, because it was opening night, there were a lot of people decked out in their finery. It was a...

I was boarding an airplane recently when the man in front of me, who looked to be about 20 years my senior, turned and asked, "How long have you worn a kippah?" He was not wearing a kippah, so I was a little startled by this very direct question. But my mind picked up on other cues and quickly filled in a story that he was Jewish and was asking this question out of a sense of solidarity.  ...

The other night I pulled off our bookshelf a thick volume from my childhood, "The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents." I was into politics and government as a kid, and at some point (before the presidency of Bill Clinton, to judge by the men profiled in the book) I had acquired this one. I'm still something of a government nerd--my kids sometimes get out the almanac on...

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 foremost: We were all okay with the weather. Thankfully, the American Jewish University's Brandeis-Bardin Campus, where we have long held...

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 different place. It's some anticipatory grieving around a subtle but significant shift in the life stage my wife and I are going...

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 are "doing aging well." He asked what I considered aging well. I considered his question and responded that I thought it included a...