"...Hospitals usually aren't serene places.  From inbound ambulance to bedside telemetry, lights flash, sirens wail and monitors beep.  Late at night when I leave the hospital, the metronome of nighttime crickets evokes the beep beep beep of hospital time..."

Open any Torah and you'll see in the first word of Leviticus a letter written in tiny superscript.  It teaches us about what healthy humility is really all about. By Rabbi David Evan MarkusVayikra 5785 (2025)​Open any Torah scroll to the first word of this week's Torah portion, Leviticus, which launches the third of the Five Books of… Continue reading A “Small” Teaching on Humility for the Chosen (P. Vayikra)

As we round the corner toward Passover, in Torah the Mishkan is finished and activated as Western life's first holy place crafted with human hands. What first made the Mishkan holy wasn't God. What first made the Mishkan holy was a human act.  Which begs the question about what "holy" is, and how we humans… Continue reading The Sense, and Senses, of Making Holy (P. Pekudei)

As our Northern Hemisphere enters the weeks of fastest increasing daylight and we accelerate into the oncoming spring (not a moment too soon!), this week's Torah portion opens with a command to make eternal light.The command aims at all of us, and the sudden absence of Moses underscores the message at this important moment. By Rabbi… Continue reading Lights On! (P. Tetzaveh)

Ten Commandments.  We've read them.  We've seen the art.  We've seen the movie.Jewish continuity, ethical purpose and spiritual becomingness all trace back to the pivotal sense-scrambling scene at Sinai.  It is said that each of us was there, the roots of our souls joined in the creation of our collective covenant.  On the Ten Commandments… Continue reading The Eleventh Commandment (P Yitro)

We all have emotional and psychological vested interests in seeming externally to be our best selves.  Most of us, we hope, respond to these impulses by actually trying to be our best selves in the world.  Our insides aspire to match our outsides.For others, the optics of manipulated perception are the primary reality or even… Continue reading Come to Narcissist – P. Bo

No liberation is easy.  Each begins with a promise that seems too good to be true.  Even a promise can seem fanciful during the squeeze of hurt or bondage – like a fantasy, or a delusion.  If there's a moral arc at all, at first it can seem out of reach. So it was for Dr. King.  So it was for Moses.  So it is for every liberation and transformation.

Who (or What) is God?  It's a question (perhaps the question) of the ages, and no blogpost can fully do it justice. ​Yet it is exactly the subject of Moses' first encounter with the One we call God: how should the Children of Israel name their liberator? And nothing has been the same ever since.

At some point (maybe many points), life teaches us that what we see depends on how we see.   So it is with our perspective on life itself.  Few of us go through life deeply inhabiting the ultimate truth of our own mortality.  But once we do, the very limits of our lives can help imbue them with greater richness and meaning. ​  If we let them.

t's not my fault.  Why should I take responsibility for any part of it?  We're all prone to say so. Yet our penchant to claim rightness has spiritual and practical limits.  Our acts and omissions ripple out far beyond their space and time, and Jewishly we claim collective responsibility for much seemingly beyond ourselves.​​Just ask the… Continue reading Showing Up, Taking Responsibility (P. Vayigash)

It's telling that Hanukkah is one of the Judaism's most popular holidays: more than any other ritual, Jews light candles for the Festival of Lights. Amidst so much darkness it's tempting to think that the candles we light can't do much – and in truth, wee candles can't do much.  They certainly don't automatically dispel the world's darkness. But that's not the point.  The candles aren't the point.  We ourselves must be the light.

What if the random nondescript person actually held the missing piece of our puzzle?  What if the bad driver who cut us off on the highway actually put us in the right place at the right time?   What if we lived into the possibility that our lives are full of pointers hidden amidst the mundane? What if they've been there all along?

Is peace possible? What might it take to imagine real reconciliation between the Children of Israel and the Children of Eisav, the Biblical brothers whose descendants became Jews and Arabs? ​If their Biblical relationship could go south and rebound, can our world get past xenophobia? By Rabbi David Evan MarkusVayishlah 5785 (2024) Click here for last year's post on… Continue reading On Mideast Peace: Is ‘Yes’ Possible? (P. Vayishlah)

We're all global citizens of a shared and fragile planet.  And at the same time, Jewish life – and with it, global diversity and genuine belonging – tends to ebb and flow in cycles of societal turbulence.  Yet again, Jews and other minorities face a recurring existential question: who are we relative to where we are?  In the U.S. flag's stars and stripes, there is still enough starlight for all of us.

Rabbi David offers brief words written at sunrise after Election Day 2024.We don't know what the days to come will bring – not for us, not for our country, not for the world.​We've never been here before, but in a sense we have.  Over the long view of centuries, as a people we have experienced many… Continue reading Where Are We Going – Post-Election 2024 (P. Lekh Lekha)