Lekh Lekha 5786: Crossover Episode

Lekh Lekha 5786: Crossover Episode

Oct 31, 2025 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

By the time you read this, I’ll be several days into a weeklong silent meditation retreat. Full disclosure: This isn’t a Jewish retreat. It’s at the Insight Meditation Center in the mountains above Santa Cruz, California, and it’s being led by Gil Fronsdal, a teacher I’ve come to deeply appreciate and learn from.

That may come as a bit of a surprise. Why is the head of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality going on a meditation retreat that isn’t Jewish?

There are a couple of reasons. The first is that I find that it’s hard for me to really quiet my work mind on a Jewish meditation retreat. There’s a loud voice in my mind that compares the experience with the retreats we teach at IJS. I can wind up thinking about whether there’s a partnership to be developed, or how a teacher might mesh in our lineup. So I decided that, if I really want to be as fully present on a retreat as I can be, it helps to be in more neutral territory.

But of course I’m also learning from the experience, even in an environment that isn’t Jewish. And that’s the second reason for me to go: In addition to my own experience, there is so much to learn from the wisdom of a master teacher like Gil. Yes, learning about myself. But also learning, through observing and experiencing, some ways I might improve my own teaching and leadership.

The relationship between Torah and wisdom from other sources and traditions has been a topic of conversation in Jewish life pretty much for as long as Jews have been around. It isn’t simple. For instance, the tradition honors Jethro as a great sage from outside the people of Israel, but it views Balaam as a sorceror who is part of a dangerous attempt to harm the Israelites. This reflects similar conflicting impulses about leaders of peoples and nations beyond our own: Cyrus (whose name is back in circulation these days) is celebrated as a great and wise king because of his magnanimity towards the Jews, while Nebuchadnezzar and Pharaoh are vilified because of their violence and cruelty.

Why does the Torah refer to Avram as Avram ha-Ivri, Abraham the Hebrew (Gen. 14:13)? The Midrash quotes Rabbi Yehudah: “All the world stood on one side (me-ever echad) and he stood on the other (me-ever echad).” According to this strain of thought, part of the essence of being a Jew is to be distinct and different—willing to stand over and against the world if necessary. In more recent times, this approach finds expression in the words of, for instance, Rabbi Boruch Ber Leibowitz (1862-1939), one of the great Torah scholars of the twentieth century: “There are two peoples in the world—Jews and non-Jews.” From there, it’s a hop, skip, and a jump to Lenny Bruce.

Yet there’s a more complex picture that emerges from another midrash on the same verse: “A fugitive brought news to Avram HaIvri,” that his nephew Lot had been taken captive. Who, according to the midrash, is this news-bearing fugitive? None other than Og, future King of Bashan, who would wage war against the Israelites in the time of Moses. Surprising, yes. And in order to make sense of it, the midrash adds that what Og really wanted was that Avram would go to battle and be killed, leaving Sarai available for himself.

Rabbi Yosef Zundel of Salant (1786-1866), who was the rabbi of the Ashkenazi community of Jerusalem, further complicates the picture here. Before the Israelites’ war against Og, God reassures Moses, “Do not fear him” (Numbers 21:34). What would Moses and the Israelites have to fear? The Talmud answers: “Perhaps the merit of our forefather Abraham will stand for Og and save him” (Niddah 61a). Rabbi Zundel comments: “There is important mussar to learn here. If Og, who did just one good deed—and even then, had bad motivations—earned the merit of a great mitzvah to the point that it caused Moses and all of Israel to fear that they couldn’t stand against him, how much greater is the merit of one who does something good with good intention!” Note that Rabbi Zundel doesn’t limit the possibility of that merit only to Jews—it applies to anyone.

Our current moment is deeply inflected with this cultural legacy: What does it mean to be a Jew today? How do we understand, talk about, and act on the possibilities of threats and violence against Jews—and the possibilities of alliances, solidarity, and goodness? How do we hold the cultural legacies of traumas recent and ancient—and how do we try to live with them mindfully, wisely, skillfully?

These are not new questions. They have been our people’s questions since Abraham and Sarah. Just as in their time, the work of living these questions is, yes, work of the body—but also work of the heart and mind. While Abraham smashed the idols of his day, he also had spiritual friends and allies. As the rest of Genesis 14:13 points out, when the fugitive brought news to Abraham, he was dwelling “at the terebinths of Mamre the Amorite, kinsman of Eshkol and Aner, these being Abram’s allies,” who, according to Rashi, had “entered into a covenant with him.” They were, perhaps, the first allies of the Jews.

So I’m on my way to a meditation retreat with a wonderful Buddhist teacher, with the intention that what I learn and practice can deepen my life of Torah and mitzvot. I’ll look forward to sharing some reflections with you when I’m back.

Before I sign off, here are a couple of questions you might reflect on:

  • I expect some of this conversation lands differently for different folks. What sensations, if any, did you notice arising as you read it? What do you think may have contributed to those feelings or responses?
  • Consider Rabbi Yehudah’s comment, that to be an Ivri, a Hebrew, means to stand against the world. Consider also that another meaning of Ivri is “one who crosses over.” When, if ever, have you resonated with one, the other, or both?
Book Talk with Jane Eisner

Book Talk with Jane Eisner

Oct 29, 2025 | Blog

We are grateful to Jane Eisner for sharing her insights with us. Please enjoy the conversation recording.

Jane Eisner has spent her career breaking barriers in journalism. The first woman to edit Wesleyan University’s student paper, she went on to hold senior roles at the Philadelphia Inquirer for 25 years before becoming the first female editor-in-chief of the Forward, where she expanded readership and earned multiple awards. Eisner has also reported for leading outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, taught at Penn and Columbia, and written Taking Back the Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in Our Democracy (2004). She recently completed an interpretive biography of Carole King for Yale’s Jewish Lives series, where she explores the legendary musician’s extraordinary career, personal struggles, and cultural impact. Today, she serves as writer-at-large for the Forward and consults for the independent news site Shtetl.

If you would like a copy of Jane’s book, you can purchase it here.

Noach 5786: One for All

Noach 5786: One for All

Oct 24, 2025 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

One morning this week, on a visit to New York, I was walking down Broadway on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, en route to a fundraising meeting. A significant part of my job involves offering wealthy people the opportunity to support our work at IJS, and in this case I was headed to the apartment of one such person—who, I hasten to add, is not only a wonderful supporter, but also, unsurprisingly, a wonderful, caring, and generous soul.

It was a beautiful fall morning. The air was crisp and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was one of those mornings when, in my experience, New York itself can feel a little more generous.

That atmosphere of abundance may have contributed to a mitzvah I witnessed. An elderly man in an ill-fitting suit and a golf cap was walking slowly, pushing a cart. He appeared to be on his way to the drug store. As he came in my direction, he turned aside to another man who was camped out in a sleeping bag above the exhaust vent of a building. The old man took out a dollar bill and gave it to the man on the ground and said something kind to him.

I noticed this interaction as I kept walking towards my fundraising visit in a fancy apartment building with a doorman. And the questions began to churn: I wonder what motivated the old man to do that. I wonder how the guy on the ground felt. I wonder what that dollar means to each of them (given that there’s not a lot you can buy with a dollar these days).

And then some bigger ruminations began to take shape: The building whose grate was providing heat to the man on the ground cost tens of millions of dollars. The price of an apartment in that building is itself millions of dollars. And what am I doing? I didn’t stop to offer the guy a dollar. In fact, I’m on my way into one of those fancy apartments to perform what some of our donors lovingly refer to as a “cashectomy,” moving (with the patient’s consent, of course) dollars out of their account and into that of the not-for-profit I lead—a portion of which goes to pay my own salary.

The thoughts spun for a while, swirling around capitalism and inequality and the ways I’m personally caught up in the whole system. And then I took a breath, let the thoughts settle, and decided to keep a mental snapshot of the moment.

While I don’t live in Manhattan now, I did as a young adult. And the sense I get whenever I visit these days is a feeling of a hollowed out middle. You can see it in the skyline. You can certainly see it in the mayoral election, which is making the news well beyond the Hudson River. Before I moved to New York as a young person, a mentor of mine told me, “To live in New York you need to be young or wealthy.” From what I can tell, today it can feel like even the “young” part of that statement isn’t so true.

While we think of it as a story about an ark during a flood, if we read a little more deeply we may find that Parashat Noach is a reflection on what it takes to maintain a shared society. What does it mean to be created in God’s image? How do we think of human beings in relation to other species, and to the planet itself? What are the basic norms by which we’re going to live? And, in the story of the Tower of Babel that comes after the flood, how do we maintain the languages and cultures that make us unique while also abiding in a sense of shared humanity?

At the outset of the Torah portion, the Holy One tells Noah, “the world is filled with violence because of human beings” (Gen. 6:13). The Midrash comments that this verse teaches that the generation of the flood took corruption to a particularly sophisticated level, stealing from one another not only through brazen acts, but in less detectable ways: “This is what the members of the generation of the Flood would do: One of them would take out a basket filled with beans [to the marketplace]. Another person would come and take less than a peruta worth [of beans] and another one would come and take less than a peruta worth [i.e. less than the amount for which one would be able to collect compensation in court].”

The Saba of Slobodka, Rabbi Nosson Zvi Finkel, observed that this midrash teaches how deeply we have to work on our character, our spiritual core: “How very much are we obligated to improve our actions!” On the one hand, it means letting go of the desire to hold on to even a peruta, the smallest amount of wealth. And on the other, I might suggest, and as the old man I saw on Broadway embodied, it could mean recognizing the value of that peruta to another—and freely and generously giving it away (much less giving many perutot).


The beginning of the verse from Genesis that I quoted above reads: “The end of all flesh has come before Me.” Perhaps on the deepest level, we read the story of the Flood to remind us that, while we may delude ourselves, ultimately we can’t take any of it with us. We are gifted the opportunity to sojourn on the planet for a short while. The question for each of us individually, and for all of us collectively, is, How can we be the best possible custodians of that gift—not only for ourselves, but for us all?

Entering into the Ark of Prayer

Entering into the Ark of Prayer

Oct 23, 2025 | Blog, by Rebecca Schisler, Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

The Hebrew month of Cheshvan brings a welcome relief from the spiritual highs of Tishrei— we get to take a break from large communal gatherings and integrate all that transpired for us during the high holidays. With more space for solitude and intimate time at home, we have a chance to bring renewed energy to the inner work of spiritual practice and prayer. In ancient Israel, Cheshvan is when people began to pray for rain. 

From a spiritual perspective, rain represents all that we need for life to bloom forth and flourish; it symbolizes the possibility of sustenance, and the union of heaven and earth. Our tradition teaches that unlike dew, the proper rainfall in its season is dependent upon our prayers and deeds. Following the description of six days of creation, Torah says that vegetation had not yet sprouted upon the earth because it had not yet rained, as there was no human to work the land. Rashi, citing the midrash, comments that the rain had not yet fallen upon the earth because there was no human to pray for it. Indeed, the midrash seems to suggest that the human being was essentially created to pray for rain. Our mystical tradition teaches that we as humans are the intermediaries between heaven and earth, and the channel that makes that connection possible is prayer. 

This month, we might focus on revitalizing our prayer practices. We can bring mindfulness here by unifying our body, heart and mind within the action of prayer itself. The Baal Shem Tov shares some beautiful instructions on this via his homiletic reading of God’s command to Noah: “Make a shining stone for the ark.” The Baal Shem Tov points out that the word “ark” in Hebrew— teivah— can also be translated as “word.” The verse continues, “Come, you and your entire household, into the teivah.” A person must go deeply inside of the words of prayer, bringing their heart, attention, and all of their being— their full household— to the words, until they begin to sparkle like a glass window through which the divine can radiate. 

This approach to prayer invites a slowing down. You might choose just one verse from the prayer book to focus on, bringing all of your attention to each word until you can sense its meaning in your heart and even in your body, and then proceed to the next. As an example, you can nurture this practice with a simple morning prayer— 

“Modeh ani l’fanecha, ruach chai v’kayam” — Grateful am I before you, living and eternal spirit” — or “Elohai neshama shenatata bi tehorah hi” — “My God, the soul that you have given me is pure.”

Slow down enough to feel the essence of every single word. Notice the impact it has on your mind, and on your heart. 

May our practice and our prayers in this watery month of Cheshvan allow all that transpired in the high holidays to soak deeply into our beings, so that we can embody and nourish the seeds of our intentions for the year ahead.

Send Out the Raven Ahead of the Dove

Send Out the Raven Ahead of the Dove

Oct 23, 2025 | Blog, by Rabbi Miriam Margles, Senior Core Faculty, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

I’m imagining us in Noah’s ark.
As the Hebrew month of Cheshvan begins and a new cycle of Torah reading is initiated, we read Parshat Noah. We encounter an ark; Noah, his family and a few of every living species; and a flood of utter destruction that wipes out all life on earth.

For the past two years, I have been holding the narrative of Noah’s ark close to me as a source of spiritual inquiry and practice, engaging with questions like – What qualities did Noah cultivate that preserved him in a violent generation? What is the spiritual practice of taking refuge in the midst of the flood of corruption and chaos? How did sanctuary in the ark school Noah’s heart and mind during the three hundred and seventy-eight days he lived in it?    

These are worthy questions but in the fragile newness and uncertainty of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, I am holding a different question. I am folding into this other question all the feelings of witnessing the return home, finally, of twenty living hostages with weeping, relief and something adjacent to joy but too cracked and broken to wholly call it joy, and with heartbreak for the families who are still waiting to receive the bodies of their killed loved ones, and with unresolved questions about sufficient aid entering Gaza, and witnessing Palestinian families returning to the rubble that was their homes, and holding my breath (and still breathing) as the unclear, unstable future of these two nations slowly takes shape amid layers of profound grief, pain, possibilities and an unclear road ahead. The flood is not over but, perhaps, the worst of the destruction has ended. I’m imagining us in Noah’s ark, coming to rest, finally, on the peaks of the mountains of Ararat as the floodgates of heaven and the deep are stopped up and the waters begin to recede. I’m asking – What spiritual guidance can we draw from Parshat Noah about the beginning of transition out of destruction and survival, and into the next stage of reclaiming life?  

After a hundred and fifty days tossed on unstable water, the ark comes to stillness on a mountaintop. Tenuous as it is, there is enough solid ground for the ark to rest – va’tanach ha’teyvah. The ark rests. Noah rests. And he opens a window to the wide sky, an opening to the air, to light and to the devastation outside. Then, in order to track the slow progress of the receding waters which takes another two hundred and twenty-eight days, Noah first sends out a raven. Later, in multiple attempts, he sends a dove. 

What is the dove/yonah? The dove is a small, slender bird. Be’er Mayim Chaim notes that in the Song of Songs, the dove is referenced as yonati, tamati – my dove, my love. It is the tender, cherished beloved. It becomes the symbol of peace. But so soon after horror, loss, anger and fear, this tenderness cannot be released first. It will not have anywhere to land. 

So before sending out the dove, Noah sends out the raven/orev, a large, rough squawking bird that “went back and forth.” Hasidic commentators understand this movement as a reference to the changing dynamic of spiritual expansion and contraction – ratzo va’shov. Spiritual growth in general is not a linear progression. All the more so in extreme circumstances – we are constricted, we fall open, we expand and we shrink. Be’er Mayim Chaim adds that orev also means “a mixture.” The raven embodies a complicated mixture of opposites, “of bad within the good and good within the bad.” What a mixed, fraught moment this is, in which the heart floods open, washed with relief, able to finally take deeper breaths, and the heart grips with pained constriction, back and forth.

At the Jerusalem rally on October 11th, after the ceasefire was declared and the return of the remaining hostages was imminent, Rachel Goldberg Polin expressed this potently. Speaking about the book of Kohelet/Ecclesiastes, which we just read on Sukkot, she said that Kohelet teaches, “there is a season and a time for everything. But now, today, we are being asked to digest all of those seasons, all of those times, at the exact same second – winter, spring, summer, fall – experience all four right now. It says there is a time to be born and a time to die and we have to do both right now. It says there is a time to weep and a time to laugh and we have to do both right now…It says there is a time to tear and a time to heal and we have to do both right now…and it says there is a time to sob and there is a time to dance and we have to do both right now.”

This is not only descriptive of what so many of us feel. It is prescriptive of the soul-work that is ours to do. This is a time to consciously feel and know the intense mixture of expansive joy and the contraction of pain, of release and anger, grief and celebration, all at once. It is exhausting, messy and intense. It is also alive, agile and true. To attend to each one means not letting opposing truths or feelings cancel each other out. As we turn to face all the realities that are present and all that have been present over these two years, the wild mix of emotions deserves space, patience and mindful attention so they can move through us and so that we can keep our hearts as agile and our thinking as clear as possible. 

So often, only after the worst is over, only when it is safe enough to let go of the ways we have been pushing or gripping in the face of looming danger and teetering vulnerability, can we begin to attend to the extent of the wreckage, and also begin to heal, build and hope. Our hearts are raw and tender from these past two years. The flood is not over but this time of receding waters asks us to learn from Noah’s waiting, meeting each stage of transition with presence and patience and discerning what is needed. This period asks us to exercise our hearts and awareness with a different kind of diligence, a different kind of attention to the many oppositional dimensions that exist together at once – to meet them, feel them, know them and release them into flight. Only then can we access the tenderness underneath. Only then can the dove, the tender wings of loving and new life, leave the protective shelter of the ark and find a genuine place to begin to build its nest.

I want to leave you with an excerpt from Leonard Cohen’s poem, Prayer for Messiah, giving these images moving expression.

O send out the raven ahead of the dove
O sing from your chains where you’re chained in a cave
your eyes through my eyes shine brighter than love
your blood in my ballad collapses the grave

¹ Hasidic commentator, Rabbi Chaim Tyrer of Czernowitz (1760–1816).
² The mother of Hersh Goldberg Polin who was murdered in Hamas captivity.

 

 

 

Bereshit 5786: Tearing Up

Bereshit 5786: Tearing Up

Oct 17, 2025 | Blog, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, President & CEO, Institute for Jewish Spirituality

Perhaps, like me, you shed tears this week.

My first tears came as I watched video of the living Israeli hostages reunited with their families. I wept along with Einav Zangauker, one of the most outspoken advocates for the hostages, as she repeatedly cried out, “Chaim sheli!” “My life!” while embracing her son Matan. I cried as the father of Yosef-Chaim Ohana finished saying his prayers and emerged to tearfully embrace him. I sobbed at the cries of the parents of Eitan Mor as they were reunited with their son, and then again as I witnessed Eitan’s mother, Efrat, illuminate the deepest meanings of the shehechiyanu blessing.

The tears came again while reciting Hallel on Shemini Atzeret. Every line seemed to take on new significance. While I have recited these verses lines all my life, they revealed a new, visceral dimension on this day against this backdrop. Hodu ladonai ki tov, ki l’olam hasdo: Give thanks to YHVH for this goodness, God’s abundant love endures forever. Tears again.

And then we danced on Simchat Torah. If Heschel described marching for civil rights as praying with his feet, then this was the same theme in a different register. I had such an urge to dance, because just sitting or standing and praying or singing simply wasn’t enough. My body needed to move in order to express what I was feeling. When the circle moved slowly, I scooted to the center and found other people to dance faster. My eyes again filled with tears—of relief, of gratitude.

What added poignancy to everything, of course, was the fact that all this was happening precisely two years after we cried while dancing—a different dance and different tears. On Rosh Hashanah each of the last two years, I have choked up while reciting the prayer to the Holy One to “turn all our troubles and afflictions into joy and gladness, to life and peace.” And now there were tears that, after so much suffering and loss, so much war and death, at least for this moment, at least on some significant level, that prayer had indeed come true.

My last tears came the morning of Simchat Torah. Even though I know it’s coming, reading the death of Moses always pulls me up short. I get a lump in my throat. We have spent the last four books of the Torah with Moshe Rabbeinu, and every year I experience a pang of loss as we recite the final lines of the Torah. A tear comes.

And then, right away, we begin again with Bereshit.

The Midrash teaches that the word Yisrael is an acronym for Yesh Shishim Ribo Otoiot Latorah: “There are 600,000 letters in the Torah.” Bereshit, the first word of the Torah, is a related acronym: B’shishim Ribo Otiot Sheyisrael Yikablu Torah: “Israel will accept the Torah with 600,000 letters.” From these teachings, the Hasidic masters expounded the idea that every member of the Jewish people has a letter in the Torah. “Each Jew is connected to one letter in the Torah,” writes Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl in his Meor Einayim. “Each letter represents the divine element in each person. It is actually the very letter from which their soul derives. It is this letter that pours forth divine blessings and holy vital force.”

In my experience, we often explore this teaching with an emphasis on its personal nature: There’s a unique place for each one of us, and our avodah, our sacred service, is to find and inhabit it. I think that’s true. But at the same time, I might suggest that we’re only getting half the teaching through that understanding. Because here’s what the Meor Einayim says next: “A Torah scroll that is missing one letter is unfit for use. Indeed, it is not even considered a Torah, since each and every letter is considered a Torah, connecting with the others to make a complete unity… All Creation is a complete unity, like the Torah, which can only be called a Torah when all of its letters are present and united.”

The second part of the teaching here, I might suggest, is that our personal self-actualization is only part of the story. Yes, we need to find and be at home in our letter. But our letter is only truly our letter when it’s beside all the other letters in the Torah. We need every letter in order to make a Torah scroll. And we need every member of our community to constitute the Jewish people.

To put it another way: Torah and Jewish life are not things we can do on our own. We need the other 599,999 letters in order for our letter to mean something. So while we each have our special, unique individual journeys, those journeys are individual paths on an extraordinary highway that extends through space and time—back to the creation of the world and forward to its eventual redemption.

That brings me back to one more moment of tears. It came during the sixth of the seventh hakafot (dance sets) on Simchat Torah night. For the past two years, our synagogue has used the sixth hakafah as a moment to slow down the dancing a bit—in fact to stop. We form a large circle and sing slow songs, and we focus on the profound sense of connection and community that binds us and our entire people, not only in the synagogue, but across the world.

This year, as that singing took place, my 12-year old son Toby was on the bimah with a circle of kids spontaneously leading the hundreds of us in shul in singing a slow version of Am Yisrael Chai. Toby has come to love Simchat Torah, and he has come to love our special community in Skokie. Watching him up there with his friends, enacting the very words he was singing, I felt this incredible mixture of joy and pride, sadness and relief. As I welled up again, I spotted the parent of another of the kids on the bimah, and she had the same look on her face.

Over the coming months, I’m sure we will be unpacking a processing what the last two years have wrought for Jews and for Judaism. There’s a lot to work through. But one thing I hope we might be able to do is tap into the extraordinary spiritual power of our people. I hope we might be able to make space for every letter our collective Torah scroll. Indeed I believe we must do that. Because just as Torah lives, the Jewish people lives—in our uniqueness and our connectedness.

Before I sign off, I want to try out a new feature in these weekly messages: an invitation for you to reflect for a moment. Here are a couple of questions that can help you do so. You might consider them as journaling prompts or even as questions you can pose at your Shabbat table:

  • As you think back on this fall holiday season, or even on these last two years, are there moments that stand out to you as particularly significant? Why?
  • How do you relate to the teaching that every member of the Jewish people has a spiritual root in a letter of the Torah scroll? In particular, how does the idea of the Jewish people make you feel these days?