I like funerals. Don’t get me wrong. I know that funerals represent loss. I feel deep empathy for the mourners. And death can also be tragic, especially when disease or tragedy cuts short a life precipitously. But even though the loss of a loved one leaves an emotional hole in one’s soul that may never […]

The decision made by Simon Biles, America’s premier gymnast, not to compete at the Tokyo Olympics in most of the events that she trained for, set off a firestorm of commentary. We are a country that lionizes our athletes. The better the athlete is, the greater the pressure exerted on them to compete and to […]

This week we begin reading the fourth book of the Torah, Bemidbar, “in the wilderness”. I’d like to reflect a bit on the theme of wilderness and what it might mean to us today. I’d like to drash it, literally, play with the meaning of the word “wilderness”, in three ways. This was the Bemidbar/Shavuot dvar […]