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If you're a regular reader of these Friday reflections, you have probably noticed that, like a Law & Order episode, they follow a pretty predictable form: I start with an engaging personal story, pivot to a lesson drawn from the week's Torah portion, and then bring it home with a message about how Jewish spiritual practice can help us lead a more meaningful life. This week I feel a need to write differently. Even as I reach for the right story, I can't find it, other than to tell you that I've found myself waking in the middle of the night thinking a lot about Israelis, Gazans, and Jews. Now I'm not here to offer political commentary or analysis. Much as it's tempting, that's neither...

My oldest son, Jonah, was the first to introduce me to the contemporary idea of the "multiverse." While the concept, and even the term, have been around for centuries (Wikipedia tells me William James used it in 1895), the notion has gained particular traction in today's media. The TV show "Rick and Morty," which Jonah loves, is built on the idea of "infinite timelines,...

Twenty-five years ago, right out of college, I lived in Jerusalem for a year. While I grew up with a very strong Jewish identity, I didn't receive the kind of Jewish education that would allow me to study Talmud in the original Hebrew/Aramaic or to walk into a beit midrash and know what all the books on the shelf were, much less how to open them up and study from them. In...

When I was little, I remember I would usually wake up and come out to the kitchen to find my mother sitting there with her coffee, reading a book or the newspaper. She would often have a notebook beside her, and whatever she was reading was marked up with sticky notes. In later years, the books and sticky notes weren't there as much, and I would find her with just the...

On Monday morning a headline crossed my newsfeed: A six-year old boy in suburban Chicago had been brutally stabbed to death by his family's landlord. His mother was severely injured while trying to protect him. The story was tragic. What made it even more significant was that the boy, Wadea Al-Fayoume, was, like his mother, from the Palestinian community. While the...

If there's one constant to my life, it's siblinghood. From the moment I was born, I have been the youngest of three brothers. Since my second child was born, I have been the father of siblings (pictured above on a family picnic when they were little). When my brothers and I got married, I learned what it meant to have sisters.But my experience of siblinghood didn't come...

Dear friends, Like so many others, I awoke this past Shabbat morning to the heart-rending news from Israel. And like so many others, as the hours and days have unfolded, I have struggled to contain all the emotions: fear, grief, anger, confusion, gratitude for those who are keeping others safe and bringing healing to those in need. As I danced with my community on Simchat...

Like many people, I grew up with a beautiful Yom Kippur break-fast. Immediately after the end of services, my family would drive over to our family friends, the Rubinfelds. Rivka, the matriarch, always had out a delicious spread of bagels and lox and whitefish and rugelach. I remember the acidic sting of orange juice in my parched mouth, and the sensation of it landing at...

One of the many emotional moments of my year of mourning for my father came when I was building our sukkah. Sukkah-building is often a family affair, because it's so hard to do alone and it's something kids generally love to do. That was true for me growing up, and it has been true with my own children. While so many other Jewish rituals involve putting away and cleaning...

Earlier this year, my youngest son, Toby, and I watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy together. He is a fantasy genre lover, and, true to form, fell in love with the story of Frodo Baggins's long journey to Mount Doom, his struggle to carry the Ring of Power along the way, and his mission to throw the ring into the lava inside the mountain and destroy the ring once and for...

Dear friends,My Elul practices for the last decade or so have included listening to an album recorded by the poet David Whyte called Solace: The Art of Asking the Beautiful Question (also available here on iTunes). I generally listen to 10 or 15 minutes at a time as I walk the dog in the morning after I drop off my youngest son at the bus. Listening to Whyte's beautiful...