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)

One of my favorite moments of the Jewish year is coming... and it's probably not what you think. There's a point on Yom Kippur when we come together as if to receive anew the ancient covenant, knowing that the very act of being together magnetizes that covenant. But Torah's basis for this moment, in this week's portion, asks us to read it in a counter-intuitive way.

We humans are meaning makers: our spirituality concerns not only what happens but also what we make of what happens. Every day of our lives, usually just below the surface of our awareness, we decide what matters most and what our choices say about us and our lives. This sacred season rivets our focus on this often unconscious inner process – and how it utterly depends on what we say and do together.

We've probably heard the aphorism that "the devil is in the details." Leaving aside that classical Judaism doesn't really do "devil," spiritually the emphasis is backwards. Not the "devil" but God is in the details. The sacred inheres in our total showing up to our lives and the details of how we narrowcast our attention – especially during these precious days leading to Rosh Hashanah.

In a few short weeks, Jews worldwide will gather to proclaim Avinu Malkeinu – Our Parent, Our Sovereign. The Jewish notion of a "sovereign," whether divine (God) or mortal (king or queen), hails from this week's Torah portion that is laser-focused on the interplay of justice and humility. Because too often the two don't go together.

Modern spirituality uplifts personal choice. Most of us understand liberal Judaism to invite each of us individually to question, wrestle, discern and decide for ourselves, liberated from mandate and commandedness. That's what liberalism means: the liberty to choose for ourselves, based on the rights and equal dignity of each individual. Yet Judaism also is a team sport. We can't all go our own way and survive, much less thrive.

Week by precious week, we're shown how we strayed from our best selves. Slowly at first, this season hints, asks, presses, cajoles, demands and then forces us to see some things that maybe we labor mightily not to see. We turn away, perhaps with the whole of our lives or just a part. Or we turn away from truths about ourselves. In Torah's words, we become "stiff necked." This season's call to turn back means that we must our neck, and this turn begins... on our hearts.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall." As the Snow White fable put it, sometimes we want to see ourselves a certain way – for good or for ill – and we project that impression on others.Except nobody is their image, and nobody goes forward in life that way.  That's the ticket to going backward . It's exactly… Continue reading What Not to Be Afraid Of: P. Shlakh 5784