No, it isn’t an exotic bean curd dish at a very special Japanese restaurant. It’s Hebrew for “without form” and “void,” or “formless” and “empty,” as most English versions of Genesis 1:2 translate the Hebrew description of the chaotic state that preceded creation: “And the earth was without form, and void (tohu v’bohu); and darkness [...]
What do you suppose the most compassionate person in Iraq thought when the killings at Virginia Tech made headlines last week? Here’s how I imagine it: “What a terrible thing! May their souls rest in peace. Forgive me for saying so, but perhaps the Americans will now begin to understand how we feel when our [...]
Can anyone give me the Talmudic citation for the teaching “Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member”? (Just kidding. It’s Groucho Marx.)
We Americans have this silly addiction to top 10 (40, 50) lists. I suppose it began as a marketing artifact (and [...]
On the Gregorian calendar, today is the yahrtzeit (the anniversary) of the passing in 1976 of Rene Cassin, a French human rights activist and an author of the UN’s masterpiece, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
That noble document contains a single line articulating the right to culture:
Words are my treasure and my pleasure, so it is surprising to find myself newly amazed at the power which can be packed into a single word. Case in point: “Apartheid.”
Supporters of Israel’s current policies are up in arms over Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. They find it too critical of [...]
This week I dug out the light box I bought when we lived in Seattle, where darkness falls before 4 pm each day and persists till nearly 9 in the morning. The box generates an intense light that helps overcome the malaise some people experience in the season of darkness. For some reason, even though [...]
I spent Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) with my Jewish Renewal community, a cohort that prizes creative liturgy, ecstatic chant, guided meditation and socially conscious sermons—just my style. Because one intention of the holiday is to turn toward life and away from whatever embitters it, many of the leaders talked about the terrible suffering [...]
I’ve been chewing over a problem—an especially tough esthetic-political-spiritual problem—and I wonder if you can help. Let me explain.
Whether you look at the news or at the new TV season, at the local multiplex or the art gallery, at the nightclub or the bookstore, there’s no denying that our culture is generating boundless imagery of [...]
Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, begins Friday night. As readers know, I’ve been working on my cheshbon hanefesh—soul accounting—in preparation for the deep rituals of t’shuvah—reorientation—that mark the period of the High Holy Days.
One part of that work requires searching my heart and mind for knots of unfinished business: do I need to [...]
Last month I quoted Gandhi on inner guidance. “For me, he wrote, “the Voice of God, of Conscience, of Truth or the Inner Voice or the still small Voice mean one and the same thing.”
The Torah reading for the week just ending underscores the same truth, exhorting the people to follow what they know deep [...]
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