"What happens in disasters demonstrates everything an anarchist ever wanted to believe about the triumph of civil society and the failure of institutional authority."

Black Mountain opened in 1933 and closed in 1956. It never enrolled more than a hundred students at a time, but it has had an outsized influence on American art, poetry, and education.

I got the sensation that this week we have entered a paradigm shift, which I define as an the ineffable moment when everything changes and our brains tell us that everything is the same.

In days to come all of us will either be directly affected by the fires or find that we have friends who are directly affected.

Wittgenstein’s main claim is that our language is limited when it comes to our ability to describe reality, and therefore our understanding of reality itself is limited as well.

צװישן אונדז בײַ דער נסתר איז אַ שפּאָגל נײַער געדאַנק אין אונדזער זעלבסט־אידענטיט, דאָס הײסט, אַן ענטפֿער צו דער שטענדיקער פֿראַגע, װאָס פֿאַר אַ שול זײַט איר? אָרטאָדאָקסיש? רעפֿאָרם?

For some, acculturating to America meant secularizing while remaining deeply committed to their cultural and ethnic identity as Jews. The establishment that most symbolizes this change in American Judaism is the kosher-style deli.

During our study of the Torah portion Vayishlach last month, I came across a story in Bereshit Rabbah, a Midrashic collection, that related to a Talmudic story that I am very close to. It has many differences from the Talmudic story. There is an agreed upon biography of Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, the main character in these texts.

In Rabbinic literature, the Vision of the Dry Bones is interpreted in two main ways — the first, an actual “End of Days” resurrection of the dead, the second, an allegory for the Jews in exile and their return to Israel. There were of course later Hasidic interpretations which referred to the bones as inner desires of man and woman, resurrecting hopes and dreams which can never really die…

The Jewish people could neither depend on others for their needs, nor expect to serve those needs in a land that was not their own.

Who are the zealots of our time? Are they the Orthodox Jews of Brooklyn? The religious Zionists in Israel? Or maybe the Ultra Orthodox in both?

Before Theodor Herzl, there were other thinkers who advocated for the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel. While their very disparate backgrounds brought them to this point of view, none of them so clearly anticipated the ideas that would animate Herzl as did Moses Hess.

Human history is filled with mythologies about prophecies and the prediction of the future; it is filled with prophets and with dreamers. A rational examination of all of these phenomena reveals the hopes and wishes of societies, their anxieties and fears and their ideas of their own future.

We need to address our day to day needs, to address crises as they arise. But we need to be dreaming big again, aspiring beyond the work of a day to the work of a people.

For most of our history, Jews lived under foreign rule, and for the most part we had to bow our heads and lay low. As a persecuted minority, making demands was not possible and describing ourselves with pride was not recommended.

איך װענד צו אײַך, אַז איר זאָלט קײן מאָל נישט זיך מתיאש זײַן פֿון אַמעריקע, און זאָגן, איך האָב פֿײַנט דעם לאַנד, דערפֿאַר זאָל איך אַװעקפֿליען פֿון דאַנען.

In a society dominated by Nation, we get Fascism; in a society dominated by Holiness we get religious fundamentalism and theocracy; in a society dominated by Humanity, we may lack law and order as well as spirituality. 

The development of Zionism and Jewish diaspora nationalism finds parallels in domestic Black radicalism, diaspora anti-colonialism and the actual Anti-Colonialist struggle in Africa.

I have become more and more dissatisfied with the rabbinic recreation and demonization of Esau.

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality.”