At the start of parashat Lech Lecha, the third parasha in the book of Genesis, God commands Abram and Sarai — not yet renamed Abraham and...

Photo by Ardi Evans on Unsplash When my daughter was a baby many years ago, I remember being captivated by the ritual of bringing “first...

Photo by raquel raclette on Unsplash On the first day of Elul, I heard a beautiful teaching from Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie on a webinar...

What a journey it has been through this unimaginable year and a half. The loss of so many loved ones, the collapse of our treasured...

As American society wrestles with its history of criminal injustice, a classic piece of rabbinic commentary on this week’s portion...

During the first week of the Covid shutdown last year, I heard someone say that he had begun to look in the mirror each morning and say...

One of my favorite passages in the Torah appears at the very end of the Book of Exodus. After an extended set of descriptions of the...

Imagine a person whose politics are different from your own - a real, decent person. Would you give them a lift if their car died?

Will President Biden's call for unity lead to a betrayal of his commitment to racial and economic justice?

At this time of social isolation and fragmentation, whom do you need to draw closer to? Vayigash, one of last month’s Torah portions,...

As I write, I do not yet know who has won the presidential election. You might not know either. In this period of suspense and...

I’m so grateful that I don’t read the words of the machzor (High Holiday prayerbook) literally. If I believed that there were an...

Not to worry. Rosh Hashana does not begin until the evening of September 18th. There’s still time to prepare. But we have been living...

Tisha B’Av came early this year. We have been mourning and contemplating collective losses since early March, when the pandemic hit.

I can only hope that the agony of these weeks will serve as a sound of the trumpets, awakening our nation to the institutional racism.

Who do you want to be when the virus has passed? How will you have changed?

When we have come through this, let us turn our pain, fear and loneliness into a new way of being with others and as citizens of the world.

Let us not let the hate-mongers rob us of what we most cherish. Let us not fail to remember & celebrate that which is most precious to us.

Of all the people I met during my trip last month to the U.S.-Mexico border, one person’s face haunts me. Maria (not her real name) sat...

Ometz lev is a quality of willingness to speak truth to power and also a quality of the heart: strength tempered by love and gentleness.