On my walk, I found a speckled yellow mushroom. An app on my phone told me this mushroom only grows in association with the Eastern White pine. The mushroom is just a hint, a temporary manifestation, of the massive web of tiny filaments that invisibly bound themselves to the roots of that Eastern White pine to help it grow. This is how I imagine the great love all around us: it steadfastly sustains our world, operates invisibly, except at rare moments when it shows itself to us.
Read MoreToday, we come back into a sense of closeness with the divine presence. This Shabbat before Sukkot, we begin to see God not as transcendent king, but as immanent nurturer: We take refuge in God’s sheltering presence. Find protection and support - in the words we prayed earlier - in the sukkat shalom, the Holy One’s shelter of peace.
Read MoreThe way I respond to the deepest yearnings in my life — more often than I’d like to admit — is to refresh the New York Times homepage, or eat chocolate. We distract ourselves so we don’t have to acknowledge how far we are from who we want to be. Judaism offers us another way to respond: teshuva – often translated “repentance” and which literally means “turning” or “transforming.”
Read MoreWhen confronted with life’s intrinsic uncertainties Jacob is not so generous. We all recognize ourselves in Jacob. Over the past almost 9 months, of pandemic and political turmoil, we’ve been starkly aware of all that is out of our control. We’ve had good reason to want to close down, every excuse not to be our best selves.
Read MoreOver the course of the fall semester, several swastikas appeared on the college campus at which I work. When I first saw a picture of one, spray-painted on the inside of a bathroom stall in the library, I was pained by the depiction of a symbol that is inextricably bound up with the systematic murder of many of my family members.
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