The Priest's Armor: Protection Magic for All Who Serve

February 11, 2022 Irwin Keller

The priest’s regalia as described in this week’s portion, is not just fancy clothes; it is protection magic. Designed to deflect, to protect, to allow the priestly service to continue despite the magnitude of what the priest processes.

So I ask you: what is your protection magic?

Architecture for the Divine

February 4, 2022 Irwin Keller

I sat in the resonating chamber of the Great Synagogue, just as I had stood at the Temple of Poseidon, and wondered about this human impulse to build a house for the gods. Why? We could go outside and worship on a mountain, or before an altar of ocean, or in the Italian countryside among colonnades of umbrella pines. But no, instead we build structures of great weight, at great expense, even though their bulging doric columns are designed to call to mind the trees just outside the door.

Joseph's Bones: An Epilogue

December 23, 2021 Irwin Keller

Joseph is not asking for the transport of their physical bones. Joseph is asking the Children of Israel – asking us – to raise up, to honor, to carry forward with us, their complex and multiple qualities. Their fullness. Their selves. And that is what we are about to do. Even if it has taken 4000 years and 7000 miles to make good on Joseph’s request.

The Animal Instinct

December 10, 2021 Irwin Keller

Once upon a time we were animals alongside the other animals – before we evolved the self-awareness that cut us off from the others, that got us caught in our heads, in our bodies, in our civilizations; that got us kicked out of Eden. Now we only have a dim memory of what it is like to be the animals that we are. And so we seek out, through our imaginations and our liturgy and our magic, the connection with the animal world that even the ridiculous amount of DNA we share with other creatures can no longer provide.

Joseph's Womb: Gender Complexity in the Story of Joseph

December 2, 2021 Irwin Keller

Most striking to me are what seem to be bold hints in the text of Torah regarding an atypicality not only in Joseph’s lived gender, but in his (or their) body. The way that the language of “womb” and “knee” gravitate to Joseph in Torah in ways that they do not toward any other men speaks loudly of Joseph’s difference.