Yom Kippur at the Lincoln Memorial

I was having lunch with a dear rabbinic colleague. After inquiring into each other’s health and family, I said “I just read the Pope’s Encyclical. It is fantastic. Have you read it?” My friend looked at me quizzically and said, “I never read the Popes’ encyclicals.“ “Well, I never have either, but this is really...
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Seeing the Invisible

With the collective stress of thousands of commuters all trying to get from point A to point B, subway transit in New York can be a little overwhelming. When I’m in the city, I deal with the stress like many fellow riders— I behave as though surrounded by a protective bubble. I notice just enough...
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Parashat Bamidbar: The Imperative to Provide Refuge

My father’s family were refugees from Vienna, who fled just before World War II broke out, but not before my grandfather had been deported to Dachau. He remained incarcerated there from November 13, 1938, until January 19, 1939. He knew he had to leave Austria with his family. But leaving wasn’t easy. First, it meant...
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Rosh Pinna: Keystone of Justice

I am standing by a pristine mountain stream at 10,000 ft. in the Wind River Range in Wyoming and sobbing. My hiking partner Ed, whose family has been here for hundreds of years, has just said to me that the land belongs to me as much as it does to him. That was nearly 40...
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Klinghoffer and Me

Last week, my worlds collided. I once trained as an opera singer, and though I have traded Gluck for gemara, I remain a fervent supporter of the arts. I have a weekly appointment that brings me within a block of the Metropolitan Opera House, at Lincoln Center, and I often stroll through the plaza, admiring...
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The Fishpond

My in-laws have a koi pond in their backyard. When we visited them over Sukkot, my son Barzilai—a year and three quarters old—fell in love with it. “Peepch!” he said all weekend—wonderingly, demandingly, enthusiastically—as he dragged me to the pond’s edge to peer into it; “Peepch! Mahm! [Fish! Mayim!]” This was not the first time...
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Starting Again, and Again

Once again, all over again, we are beginning at the beginning of the Torah this week. Bereshit bara Elokim et hashamayim v’et ha’aretz, “In the beginning G-d created heaven and earth”, at least according to one translation. Haven’t we done this already? Do we really have to go back and consider the beginning again, and...
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Yovel Text Study: Betach (Security)

Imagine the time leading up to the sh’mita year in the ancient world. In an agricultural society, people no doubt would have been anxious: what would they eat while the land rested? Would the previous season’s crop suffice for an extra year? And before the yovel year, the anxiety must have been doubled, as the produce of the forty-eighth year would have to last for two extra years! This passage in Leviticus acknowledges this fear, and also frames the yovel year as a time to cultivate a sense of security not based on material possessions.
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You Can’t Leave Anyone Behind

I love Israel. But I could never live in a place called “the Jewish homeland” when progressive Jews are treated as second-class citizens. In Israel, the Orthodox establishment controls matters of personal status – primarily conversions and marriages. Jews who wish to be married, religiously, by a Conservative, Reconstructionist, or Reform rabbi generally leave the...
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Encompassing the Truth in Four Directions

In college, I used to tutor inner city middle school students through an organization called Making Waves. Once during a staff training, I was placed in a group with two Latinx tutors and two black tutors; the other group consisted of five white tutors. When my group playfully accused the supervisors of dividing us up...
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