Kings do not touch doors. They do not know that pleasure of pushing open in front of you, slowly or brusquely, one of those big familiar rectangular panels, and turning back to close it in its place again – holding a door in your arms....
There is a way of loving not attached to what is loved. Observe how water is with The ground, always moving toward the ocean, though the ground tries to hold the water's foot and not let it go. This is how we are with wine and beautiful food,...
Five tears ago, S came to speak with me. A tumultuous childhood, and the early loss of his mother convinced him that he would survive only if he was in total control of his life. By the time S came to speak, he was married...
Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. Thomas Moore, “Come Ye, Disconsolate” It’s comforting to know that I have friends who are always there for me. It’s comforting to know that I can reconnect with them even after long periods of silence. It’s comforting to know that I have...
This Kinah plays on the word, “Eichah,” and used, “Ei Ko,”: Where is the ‘Ko,’ or So, as in, “So said God?” It is commonly understood that when God uses the term ‘Ko,’ He demonstrates an intense degree of Hashgacha Pratit - Individual Divine Providence, and...
“Would that I could soar to the sphere of the heaven.” This phrase is usually understood to be based on: “Behold, like an eagle the enemy – Babylon – will swoop down and spread its wings against Moab.” (Jeremiah 48:40) Moab, an ancient enemy of...
I experience a different feeling in my gut when I see an empty space where a synagogue once stood than when I see a synagogue that stands empty. There used to be a synagogue on Rivington near Ludlow, on the Lower East Side. I first saw...
“He cut down the towering stature of Adam, the creature He had fashioned with His own hands, He had just stepped into the treasure house of Eden when he was evicted. Thus God demonstrated to him that the couch is too short.” We cannot think of all...
“Everything came to a standstill”. “Shavat” - This is based on Lamentation 5:15: “Gone –Shavat - is the joy of our hearts, our dancing has turned into mourning”. The Ibn Ezra explains that the “joy of our hearts” refers to the Offerings brought in the...
I have heard people explain the Holocaust as the expression of God’s anger with Reform Judaism, which began in Germany. That would not explain why the Germans massacred so many more traditional Jews, or why Poland and Hungary were burned by the fires of the...
Question 1: Genesis 3:9: “God, the Lord, called out to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” How did Adam hear the question? “They heard the Voice of God, the Lord, walking in the garden toward evening.” (Genesis 3:8) What did they hear? Was the Voice...
The popular conception of genius is that it is an inborn gift, yet an increasingly large body of research suggests the opposite - that genius is always the product of sustained effort. A case in point - Mozart: "Standing above all other giftedness legends, of course,...
There is another chapter written for someone else. Josiah was a little kid when he became king. He decided to be a good guy. He undertook a complete remodeling of the Beit Hamikdash. He removed the idols that literally filled the walls. One day they...
Last year, my father died, and of course it was devastating. But then, there were positive things that came out of it. While a parent is alive, it’s much easier to feel like a kid. But when a parent dies, especially one whom one relies...
Psychopaths shed light on a crucial subset of decision-making that's referred to as morality. Morality can be a squishy, vague concept, and yet, at its simplest level, it's nothing but a series of choices about how we treat other people. When you act in a...
...You can be angry, just to get angry, or you can be angry because of a pattern in a relationship. So there is a difference between someone insulting me and someone preventing me from accomplishing something with my life. Hate comes from someone who wants...
“My tent, that You yearned, even before Creation, to align with Your celestial Throne of Glory, why is it forever plundered by the hands of the plunderers?” Each stanza of this Kinah begins with “My tent,” alluding to the Mishkan and the Beit Hamikdash. This...
The author of this lamentation echoes Jeremiah: “If only my head would be water and my eyes a spring of tears, so that I could cry all day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.” (Jeremiah 8:23) “If only someone would...
There is an important comment by Rashi in the second story of Creation that is used as one of the most important ideas about prayer: “Now all the trees of the field were not yet on the earth and all the herb of the field...
In January 1864, the U.S. Army forcibly removed between 8,000 and 9,000 Navajo Indians from their traditional lands in the eastern Arizona Territory and the western New Mexico Territory to internment camps in Bosque Redondo in the Pecos River valley. They had been conquered by...
