Open Search form

Spirituality

Apply for a Blog

Sep 23, 2026, 5:55 AM

A Jewish Take on AI and Social Media

Note: The sermon version of this article, titled, "Can Claude be Counted for a Minyan?" was delivered on Kol Nidrei at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation (Bethesda, MD), where Rabbi Schwarz is the Founding Rabbi. Increasingly, people I spend time with...

Sep 20, 2026, 5:20 PM

Echoes of the Past, Rituals of the Future

It was the morning before Yom Kippur and I hadn't done tashlich yet, but there was another errand involving a trip to nature on my checklist; I needed to deposit some bones. The idea of making a pilgrimage to the...

Sep 17, 2026, 8:45 PM

Cycles of Time, Holiday Challah and the Milky Way

Spiritual growth can be perplexing and that's why it's helpful to ground ourselves in our spiritual traditions and cycles of time. I am following up on some insights of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel that Jews hallow time. Taking a look...

Ibrahim Mukherjee

Sep 17, 2026, 2:04 PM

Your Daily Pill

The Spiritual Wellness Product. We Optimise Everything Except the Heart. We are living through an extraordinary wellness boom. We measure sleep. We track glucose. We count steps. We monitor heart-rate variability. We take magnesium for sleep, creatine for performance, omega-3 for health and vitamin D when...

Sep 15, 2026, 12:26 AM

Avoiding Surplus Guilt for the Day of At-One-Ment

Friends, many years ago I attended a pre-high holidays workshop at my Toronto synagogue led by psychiatrist Dr. Norman Doidge. He lectured on the concept of 'surplus guilt' that can be incapacitating and unhelpful as we navigate our Jewish...

Sep 11, 2026, 2:32 PM

Can an AI do Teshuvah?

Marish hagazul — the stolen beam of Gittin 55a.

The season asks us to turn. This week some of the people building superintelligence admitted they don't know how to make their machines turn either. Elul is ending. In a few days we will stand in front of the open...

Sep 8, 2026, 1:20 PM

The Most Heartfelt Shehecheyanu I’ll Ever Say

It took double bypass heart surgery to teach me to stop bypassing the things that really matter. This Friday night Rosh Hashanah begins. At our dinner table I will raise my kiddush cup full of wine and say a blessing...

Sep 7, 2026, 4:47 AM

Righting The Unreal Spiel Of Rula Jabreal

Rula Jebreal called Hakeem Jeffries a monkey and insulted his very name, then excused herself for it by talking nonsense and claiming he's controlled by Israeli lobbyjng money as conspiracists do. Hakeem Jeffries is a Black man and any...

Sharona Margolin Halickman

Sep 7, 2026, 4:35 AM

The Haftara for the first day of Rosh HaShana (Shmuel I:1:1-2:10) tells the story of Chana and how she yearned for a child. In Shmuel I:1:9-11 we read: Chana stood up after eating in Shilo and after drinking; Eli the...

Sep 4, 2026, 4:57 AM

To Renew Our Days (Nitzavim-Vayelech, Covenant & Conversation)

The moment had come. Moses was about to die. He had seen his sister Miriam and brother Aaron pre-decease him. He had prayed to God – not to live forever, not even to live longer, but simply, ‘Please let...

Load more