Rachel B. Posner

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Jul 12, 2024, 6:29 PM

Parshat Hukat: Shades of Grief

My father in law died in an ICU in Portland Oregon on October 7th. In the last hours of his life, I sat with him chanting psalms, unaware of the horrors unfolding for our brothers and sisters in Israel....

Dec 2, 2023, 1:40 PM

Rapunzel: A Poem for Counting Fifty Nights

Braiding by candle light, I offer: scootch closer You ask: how does that song end? I sing: God bless the moon; God bless me; God, bless the one that I can’t see You say: Mom, I want a tattoo of the moon, full and glossy...

Oct 26, 2023, 11:51 PM

Standing Before God: Prayer as a Shield

In these anxious days, American Jews walk around feeling our hearts broken and bruised. We feel vulnerable, sad, confused: our heads bent over our phones, doom-scrolling. Some of us have trouble sleeping, some of us wake up from nightmares...

Sep 22, 2021, 6:59 PM

The missing pole

When we moved house, it took longer to settle in than I'd expected. Then we built our temporary dwelling of a sukkah, and I finally began to feeling at home

Mar 10, 2021, 7:42 AM

When Building an Altar

This week’s Parsha, Va Yak'hel, offers a detailed description of the building of the Mishkan, God’s dwelling place within the community. In Exodus 38:8 we learn a curious detail: Bezalel, the master craftsman, built the wash basin that stood...

Dec 25, 2020, 7:47 AM

The Art of Hiding

“What is real is almost always, to begin with, hidden and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening.” -- David Whyte We’ve got questions. How will we get...

Nov 1, 2020, 6:46 AM

Parshat Vayera: Attending to Angels

“It’s such romantic house,” I thought. It was charming, freshly painted, and in walking distance to our favorite bookstore. The low price should have raised alarm bells. But we were so busy trying to assess “the bones” of the...

Sep 25, 2020, 7:44 AM

The Idea of a Bridge

One August morning, anticipating the whirlwind of the high holidays and the return to school in our pandemic-altered world, I walked by myself along a salt marsh. I came across the ruins of an old bridge that had washed...

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About Me

Dr. Rachel B. Posner is a licensed psychologist and cognitive behavioral psychotherapist who writes about the intersection between religion and psychology. She is currently studying to become a rabbi at the Academy for Jewish Religion.