Learning how to be silent and listen to others, inside and outside of our community, even when I strongly disagree with them, has helped me in my process of return.

The Book of Jonah, which we will read on Yom Kippur in just a few weeks, tells the story of a man who was chosen by God and refused the call. He tried to flee, travelling as far as one could travel in those days, and ended up on a boat seized by a violent storm as it travelled.

The American way of thinking is, at the root, libertarian. We believe that we have an innate right to “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” As Jews, there is another voice that is always in our ear. Yes, we have individual responsibilities, but we do not fulfill those responsibilities for ourselves alone.

The lonelier and more fragmented our society becomes, the more we feel the need to belong, to be a part of something, even if it means to conform. The rise in fascist tendencies and authoritarianism worldwide is not accidental. The need to belong and to find meaning becomes so crucial, that in some situations it would inevitably crush any resistance to it, any minority opinion, and with it, human rights.

Being concerned over climate change is a moral imperative, but can it be considered a legal imperative in Jewish law? I believe it is possible to conceive of it as such, and in doing so, can enlighten forgotten corners of our own religion.

Simply put, Teshuvah is the act of return. The first and most immediate questions then are: return to where and return from where. The distance between ourselves and God is best understood as a kind of alienation. We have let our actions grow into an obstruction between us and God, and that obstruction has made it uncomfortable for us to speak.

I did not expect to learn about Jewish history in Maine. My family there is not Jewish, but when I read Yiddish literature that describes devastating winters in Eastern Europe as endless miles covered in white, tundra-like nothingness, I am always reminded of how my mother describes her rural childhood in Maine.

אין אוניװערסיטעט, אַ באַקאַנטער האָט מיך געעצהט אַז איך זאָל װערן אַ חזן, נישט קײן רבֿ. איך האָב דעמאָלט עס גערעכענט פֿאַר אַ באַלײַדונג. פֿאַרװאָס נישט קײן רבֿ? איך בין נישט גוט גענוג, קלוג גענוג? 

According to Jung, the process of Individuation is the journey one must take to discover or rather remember ones true Selves. The only way to do so is to confront our Shadow and access our unconscious.  

Last Sunday, after fielding perhaps too many questions over the previous week, I took a few swigs of Yemeni Adeni Chai, let the caffeine flow through my veins, and typed out seven pages of questions that Rabbis Hollander, Rosenfeld and I had heard at least five or more times each over the years. Rabbi Hollander provided some key input on the books, but the Chai provided the stamina for me.

Everyone of us lives our lives with a mixture of joy and sorrow, ease and suffering.

After reading Love’s Work, I texted my chevruta who recommended it to say that I disagreed strongly with Rose’s account of Judaism: non-belief, absent from nature, characterized by reason. Her account seems to understand Judaism through Protestantism, which Rose herself acknowledges as the path that defined her re-entry into Jewish tradition.

What does it mean to say Shabbat was “last made, but first planned?” Let’s consider Alkabetz’s idea that Shabbat is a person, a queen. The personification of this day is not unique — it is the core of Kabbalat Shabbat as a concept, in which the Kabbalists would wait in the fields to welcome the Sabbath bride. 

Rabbi Lew was committed to the observance of Halakhah (Jewish Law), but when the rigidity that he held to the Halakhah came up against his sense of the dignity of human life, he turned. He was not in the vanguard of bringing the Queer community into the mainstream of Conservative Judaism, but he worked very closely with Kenny Altman, the first openly gay president of a Conservative congregation and would have performed Gay Marriages if his health hadn’t forced him to retire. His traditional practice gave authority to his departures from it.

Yes, Montesquieu did write about the separation of government branches but the main idea coming out of The Spirit of Law is that what matters for the freedom of citizens under a certain rule is not necessarily the form of their government but rather, their spirit.

I am deeply familiar with the axis of anxiety and belief, not through the experience of something genuinely threatening and traumatic such as illness, but in the much more mundane experience of fearing something indirect and unnameable.

Sami Elmaghrebi was a symbol of Morocco itself. In the 40s, he was one of King Mohammed V’s favorite singers, and in 1955, started his own record label in Paris.

The OPE (in English: Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia), concentrated the efforts of the leading Jews of St. Petersburg to improve the lives of the Jews of the Russian empire.

According to the Zohar and according to the Torah, humans were created in order to make choices.