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Sep 6, 2021, 3:39 PM

Choose Life Now

Dood Evan (c) 2020

At this point we’re all survivors. Will we make it through another year? The last Torah reading before Rosh HaShannah includes this call: הַחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה וּבָחַרְתָּ בַּחַיִּים Life and death I put before you Blessing and curse Choose life. What does choosing life...

Aug 20, 2021, 12:07 PM

When this is over… #2

According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry of the year was awake tingling with itself sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax unsignificantly off the coast there was a splash quite unnoticed this was Icarus drowning William Carlos Williams When this started, I wrote a...

Aug 18, 2021, 12:44 PM

Buddhists teach that pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. Suffering is what we add to pain when we either resist or identify with it. Resisting pain tends to intensify it—like tightening a muscle while getting an injection. Identifying makes...

Dec 7, 2020, 1:10 PM

New Skin for an Old Ceremony

A new series that has been airing on Israeli TV this fall has effectively created a sanctuary for a national mourning ritual. Forty-seven years after the war that almost wiped Israel off the map and that shaped its policies...

May 28, 2020, 1:56 PM

If it be your will That I speak no more And my voice be still As it was before I will speak no more I shall abide until I am spoken for If it be your will If it be your will That a voice be true From this...

Apr 22, 2020, 4:53 PM

When this is over…

“I may not see my father again.” A friend in Brooklyn, whose elderly father lives here in Israel, voices the fear no one else I know will acknowledge. From the Upper East Side, another friend sends me names of ill...

Apr 3, 2020, 12:46 PM

All Who Are Silent, Come and Speak

When danger looms, people orient in different ways. Some carry on with business as usual. Some jolt into fight-flight. Some just breathe. Some pray. Some face the monster. Some find grace in the midst of terror and sing with...

Mar 30, 2020, 1:03 PM

The space between continents

Jerusalem, March 25, 2020.

I'd been expecting disaster to strike; now, as the story that gives shape to our lives falls apart, I'm learning to be patient while I wait for a new one to emerge

Oct 10, 2019, 6:44 PM

To open a pomegranate, respect its inner structure

When I was an undergraduate at Yale, around this time of year ahead of Sukkot (the Feast of the Tabernacles), bearded men in black often stood at one of the main crosswalks and approached students who looked like they...

Oct 3, 2019, 10:16 PM

Bible Hill

It was Yom Kippur and I was meditating on Bible Hill, when I remembered the gift I meant to send Barbara in recognition of who she is and how she lives with joy

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