Here’s a one-question pop quiz, and everyone gets an “A.” Now that this year’s Jewish High Holy Days are done, which of the following four statements most accurately describes how you feel?    a. Huh? What’d I miss?    b. Thank goodness! I’m so done.    c. Wow! I feel refreshed and renewed.    d. What a… Continue reading Spiritual Hangover: Coming Down From the Mountain

As High Holy Day tides approach and soon over-wash with their poignant waters of joy, awe, solemnity and introspection, it’s tempting to imagine that this season is only for emotional and spiritual internals. This season of teshuvah (returning, repairing, forgiving) is for thinking and feeling teshuvah – but mainly as springboards for action. It’s good to think teshuvah in our minds and feel teshuvah in our hearts. It’s healthy to… Continue reading Just Do It: A High Holy Day Call to Action

Today is September 1, and this weekend begins the Jewish month of Elul, doorway to the High Holy Days of awe, meaning, introspection and transformation. Yes, it’s that time. Tradition adds to daily liturgy Psalm 27 to focus us – body, heart, mind and soul – on our spiritual journey anew. And hidden in Psalm 27 is a word… Continue reading “If!” — Walking Backwards into Elul

Three friends are having a hard time. One laments being lonely unpartnered. Another tends a spouse with a tough prognosis. A third faces an unjust assault to a career. Oy, such downers for the hazy, lazy days of mid-summer! Of course, the comforting idea that certain times are “supposed” to be happy isn’t always the world’s… Continue reading Nowhere to Run (And a Good Thing, Too)

This post is for you if you ever felt small after receiving critique or challenge, or that a leadership burden is too heavy, or that no good deed goes unpunished. (Essentially, this post is for everyone.) And of course, this post is for me and my own roles in government, congregational life and a national nonprofit organization. If we teach… Continue reading How to Fall on Your Face: The Spiritual Art of Leadership

I’ll never forget that time I taught the first line of this week’s Torah portion (B’midbar). One English translation begins, “God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai” (Numbers 1:1), from which Jewish tradition spins countless interpretations. Reading this verse, the student asked me, “Why did God speak to Moses in China?” Nonsense: The Sinai peninsula is adjacent to modern-day Israel,… Continue reading China as Sinai and Parakeets on the Roof: The Important Spiritual Art of Jewish Bloopers

Scientists report that playing a game like Rock Band  can make you more caring – and the reason touches the core of what it means to be Jewish. Humans tend to experience less empathy for “strangers” than for people we deem “more like us” – family, friends, colleagues and members of our “tribe.” Neurobiology explains that perceived similarity triggers our mirror neurons,… Continue reading All of Us: ‘Rock Band’ Judaism and Emotional Contagion

Judaism and justice go hand in hand. The Jewish value of tzedakah (charity, from the Hebrew word for “justice”) underscores that to “be Jewish” is partly to “do Jewish,” and to “do Jewish” means to give generously. Judaism asks tzedakah not only as charitable acts of support for others, but also as defining acts of identity for ourselves.… Continue reading “If One’s Means Do Not Suffice”: Confronting the High Price of Doing Jewish

Travel in your mind to the top of our atmosphere, where Earth’s envelope of life-giving oxygen and nitrogen blends into the cold vacuum of space. Looking down from that heady height, as astronauts have done since 1961, the Earth below seems borderless and pastoral, gently still except for flashes of lightning and polar aurorae dancing across the globe. This uplifted perspective on our planet… Continue reading Seeing Bigger

Jews are a People of the Book; Jews also are a People of the Song. In fear, poverty, war and exile, song packed light and eased the way. This spiritual secret is encoded in Jewish spiritual DNA: we can sing our way through. Even for those of us who wouldn’t describe ourselves as singers, the ancient secret of song is ours to rediscover and… Continue reading From Sigh to Song: A Way Toward Freedom

“Merry Christmas,” says this pulpit rabbi and co-chair of the Jewish Renewal movement. Regardless of our theologies and beliefs, the message of Christmas is worthy for Jews to think deeply about – but we need to get clear about what we understand the real message of Christmas to be. Granted, Christmas can leave Jews feeling either “Bah Humbug” or “Amazing Grace”: both are popular Christmas… Continue reading Angels We Have Heard On High

Happy Thanksgiving. Now, let’s get real: Some don’t feel thankful today. We might feel like the turkeys got us down. We might feel burdened by hosting, harried by travel, lonely for having nowhere to go, bothered for having to go somewhere we don’t want to go, or pre-triggered by a secular holiday season happier in advertising than anticipation or reality.… Continue reading It’s Thanksgiving, But What if One Doesn’t Feel Thankful?

If you’re reading this post during October, it’ll soon be Halloween – that great Jewish holiday. Yes, you read that right. (Well, sort of.) In no obvious sense is Halloween a Jewish holiday. Historically, Halloween derives from Christianity’sAll Hallows’ Eve, traditionally a time of feasting and vespers before All Saints’ Day on November 1, which… Continue reading Of Challah-ween, Havdalah-ween and Yaakov Lanterns

Sunday night (October 4, 2015) begins Shemini Atzeret, the last festival in the summer/fall Jewish holiday cycle. For many moderns, Shemini Atzeret is obscure, confusing or irrelevant – but investing ourselves in this holiday can revitalize the spirit for the year ahead. Here’s how. * In 1993, alternative rock band Crash Test Dummies released its second… Continue reading The Spirituality of Just Hanging Out (Shemini Atzeret Edition)

This weekend (September 4-5, 2015) traditionally brings the Selichot service of inner awareness and penitence in readiness for the High Holy Day journey of teshuvah (return, amends). There’s no more apt moment to spiritually reflect on the source of forgiveness. The thing is, Jewish thought is spiritually schizophrenic about the source of forgiveness. In 1711, an… Continue reading The divine dance of forgiveness

On September 10, 1813, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry led the U.S. Navy to victory in the pivotal Battle of Lake Erie, which turned the War of 1812 toward American advantage and ultimately preserved U.S. independence from the English crown. That day, Perry reportedly coined two historic phrases. One was “Don’t give up the ship” – now a timeless… Continue reading We have met the enemy

“Balaam and the Angel,” painting from Gustav Jaeger (1836). For all of Torah’s miracles large and small, the story of a talking donkey who sees an angel is perhaps Torah’s most magical and childlike narrative. In its words lurks a profound secret that touches (and challenges) the core of our adult sense of good and… Continue reading The Devil You Know

For all the spiritual riches of religious tradition, sometimes we forget our spiritual essence – the spark of divinity we associate with each soul, the inherent Oneness connecting all things, the heightened reality hiding in plain sight. Our penchant for spiritual amnesia is less a Jewish frailty than a human one: after all, to forget is human. Each world wisdom tradition, in… Continue reading A String Around Your Finger

In April, I represented ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal among #tenrabbis joining CLAL co-president Irwin Kula at the TriBeCa Disruptive Innovation Awards.  In the Green Room backstage with me were titans of industry, technology, education, advocacy, media and the arts who’d made fundamental change in the world – the likes of Bill Magee (co-founder, Operation… Continue reading Renewing Disruptive Innovation

Hello darkness, my old friend. I’ve come to talk with you again Because a vision softly creeping Left its seeds while I was sleeping, And the vision that was planted In my brain still remains Within the sound of silence. – Simon & Garfunkel Stereotypes can be risky, but it’s probably safe to say that Jews… Continue reading The Sounds of Silence