To me, the wisdom that a Biblical text can impart always resides between the words in the scroll and the life and times of the reader. For that reason, I was struck this week by the juxtaposition of Parshat Bo, which sets the stage for the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the master-story of […]

Much “ink” has been spilled in recent years over the dangers posed to both Jewish and American values by a particularly ugly version of the American political right wing.  But the right wing has not cornered the market on intolerance and bigotry. This article appeared in the Times of Israel on October 22, 2021. Evidence the position […]

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 […]