Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai died and was buried on Mt. Meron, having instructed his disciples to visit his grave and celebrate his memory annually. Which is what was happening yesterday, because the number of his disciples has grown, no longer ten, but tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and includes all of those people who were there, just as it includes us as well.
To Be Impervious (Audio Podcast)
Oh to be so impervious! To hold the weight of the hardship of the people and for it not to absorb through our skin and into our bones! But no, we are so porous. N’kavim n’kavim chalulim chalulim as we say in our morning prayers. We are porous and penetrable! We were made that way.
Read morePesach 7: Obstacles, Love, Dew, and the Sea (Audio Podcast)
This seventh day of Pesach is an intersection of Shabbat time, Passover time, mythic story, Divine names, the coming of dew, and the poetry of our medieval ancestors. It brings to mind obstacles, liberation, and love. (Or just scroll down for the treats.)
Read moreShabbat HaGadol: Between the Generations (Audio Podcast)
On Shabbat HaGadol we read from the prophet Malachi, who envisions a time when the hearts of children turn toward parents and the hearts of parents toward children. How do we turn our hearts to all the ancestors and to the people who will follow us on this earth? What is the healing we need and the healing we can offer?
Read moreNot-One, Not-Two, Not-Three (Audio Podcast)
Why don’t Jews count people? No sooner do we count ourselves than we notice our extreme vulnerability and ephemerality in this life and this world. And thus the inherent bravery implied in the phrase “stand up and be counted.”
Read moreShechinah Swoon (Audio Podcast)
Unlike some depictions, Esther had no need to swoon when she entered Achashverosh's throne room. After all, she was garbed in Shechinah.
I explore this moment and its mysticism more deeply in an article in Evolve Magazine. Click here.
In the Oasis (Audio Podcast)
We are in a kind of oasis moment right now. A place of respite does not need to be the perfect place or the best place. It just needs to be enough. And the relief and rest we feel will be real.
Ordination and Insurrection (Audio Podcast)
The author as summer camp rabbi, Oconomowoc, WI, 1975. Photo by Dawn Weiner-Kaplow.
Tomorrow is the simcha of my smicha – my rabbinic ordination. It means so much to me after a wait of more than half a century. But history waits for no simcha, and we have to also look at this week’s insurrection in our capital.
Read more2020 Hindsight (Audio Podcast)
Despite the “good riddance 2020” memes, I actually feel that the last year, with all its challenges and surprises, needs to be seen and considered. I think about our forefather Jacob, who this week gives a farewell assessment of each of his twelve unruly sons. I know how much we want to say goodbye to these last twelve unruly months that brought us so much angst, but let’s take a look.
In a Christmas Mood (Audio Podcast)
Making friends with Jesus, figuring out a handle for Christ, and managing Jewish Christmas guilt.
Read moreThat Light in Joseph (Audio Podcast)
Joseph, Overseer of Pharaoh’s Granaries. By Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1874. Source: Wikipedia.
One often-overlooked dimension of Joseph’s hiddenness has to do with his gender. Torah keeps pointing to something unusual about it. This includes references to his looks, his emotions, his social role, even his body.
Read moreTo Love the Absent Mind (Audio Podcast)
I return from a 6-week leave of absence with questions , raised by an unfortunate meeting of home and car, about my own mind’s sudden leave of absence.
Read moreLet it Rain (Audio Podcast)
I am worried that our will to live is being depleted. Not that people are dying because they gave up. Although clearly the world has become less hospitable, and our assessment of what future we might look forward to has shifted. But I'm talking about something beyond that. There is something about the usual flow of life through us and through this Creation that feels to be at risk.
Notes on Transformation (Audio Podcast)
And here we are, wondering how to be part of this transformation, how to tend and cultivate it; how to keep it from becoming something dreadful and instead inch it toward something beautiful. I somehow picture it like that befuddling Olympic sport, curling. We can't force this rebirthing world to move forward the way we want. But we can skate alongside with brooms, and create the subtle conditions for it to gently incline toward blessing.
Read moreIn the River of Light (Audio Podcast)
Let us not mistake this world of politics and rancor as the only world in which we exist. This is a saturated, hydro-charged Cosmos.
Read moreLate Season (Audio Podcast)
And there it was. My unspoken conviction that all fruition must come before age 60, while I'm still young in my own estimation. That if I didn't achieve whatever on some timeline, then I'd failed, and I might as well give it up. I sat there and laughed at myself, willing to deny my future self all sorts of fulfillment and joy, just because I thought 60 was too old.
Read moreThe Fires of Elul (Audio Podcast)
I have nothing to say about it. No way to beautify this extreme weather story. No silver lining to offer. Our species long ago stripped the planet of silver linings, using them as shiny decorations on the edifice of unsustainable living.
Read moreStations of the Journey (Audio Podcast)
The journey that we are on itself is a Divine Name. Each stop on it is a letter. This journey through stations of sorrow and hope, outrage and love, grief and fear and fatigue and coziness too. Each stop, each encampment wants to be noticed and counted, lest in retrospect it become a blur.
Reflections on Parashat Mas'ei during COVID times.
Counting and Chanting (Audio Podcast)
We are in many overlapping periods of time – the 22-day "narrow place" as well as the enduring shelter-in-place. Some thoughts on the flow of Jewish time, and on the musical traditions that we employ to accompany us on the journey.
Read moreWalk Humbly (Audio Podcast)
God, you have made the human slightly less than angels. Which is, I'm sure, meant as a compliment. But just under the angels is a bummer of a spot to be in. Not high enough to really get the big picture we need and want. And not rooted in the earth enough to have the ways of knowing that other animals do, who do not have to try to figure out what is motivating them.
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