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.

Which of two well-known readings of this text is correct?

Ten months after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, I moved to Palo Alto. When our first Sukkot arrived, members of the Jewish community...

Rabbi Levi Yitzhak teaches that with every breath we take, God breathes life into us as on the day of creation.

We must arise from our posture of humility in order to practice transformative love, emulate God’s ways and spend our lives in service.

I have been to many demonstrations at Palo Alto City Hall. But there was something special about the one on Aug. 11, for Tish'a B'Av.

The Israelite spies were sent on a sacred mission and they failed spectacularly. Why? Because they let fear overpower them, overwhelming...

This year I can visualize the scapegoat being cast out by the community, because I have seen it on the streets of San Francisco.

Still aching from the horror of the massacre at the mosques in New Zealand, I found myself at a remarkable gathering last week. It was...

A friend of mine says sardonically, “You’ve got to love the Megillah (the Book of Esther, on which the festival of Purim is based). It...

When life is stormy and confusing, wouldn’t it be amazing to have a spiritual navigation system to tell us what we need to do?

This week’s Torah portion has a lot to say. J. Weekly | JANUARY 10, 2019 In normal times, I approach Parashat Bo in the usual way. I dive...

(published in Yashar, the Newsletter of The Mussar Institute, January 2019) When my daughter was a little girl, she had an uncanny...