In my last blog, I wrote about spiritual preparation for the Passover holiday, how the deep metaphor of purging our diets of chametz — leavening — also relates to locating and clearing out whatever puffs up our egos or clogs our ability to remain present and compassionate. The other wonderful metaphor of the holiday has …
Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) starts Saturday night. I love it that the central metaphor of Jewish spirituality is liberation from slavery, and that the holiday that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt turns on symbolic re-enactment of that liberation. For me, the greatest opportunity for growth lies in the elimination of chametz from one’s life during …
On Tuesday night I watched Daniel Anker’s new documentary on the cable channel AMC, Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and The Holocaust. It’s not scheduled to rerun at this point, but look for repeats in months to come. It depicts the way self-censorship takes hold, borne along by commercial considerations (e.g., reluctance to offend German movie ticket-buyers, …
I’m part of a discussion elist for progressive Jews, and like a zillion other online groups, we’ve been posting messages about the Terry Schiavo case (may she rest in peace). Over the weeks of its unfolding, people have sent eloquent expositions of their own widely divergent views to the list, from those who feel the …
The Jewish holiday of Purim begins on Thursday evening, so as every year, my thoughts turn to the tale of identity and redemption it commemorates. A few years ago I took a course in midrashic writing (writing that elaborates biblical texts) from a well-known poet who decided to use \Megillat Esther\/the Scroll of Esther — …
I’ve been thinking about the ways we are shaped by whatever we resist. Because of anomalies in the Hebrew calendar, the anniversaries of my parent’s death fall a week apart, the 20th and 27th of the month of Adar, which this year begin on two successive Monday nights, 28 February and tomorrow. My father died …
Each of us has a characteristic disappointment, something that strikes in a very deep and very old place. Mine is regression. Whether between two people or two nations, nothing sends me into despair more quickly than believing genuine progress has been made, then seeing things snap back into their original distorted shape. Say my friend …
Since mid-January, I have been trying to practice what Martin Luther King preached, to love my opponents. It’s rough going, and I’m not doing all that well. But as is said in \Pirke Avot\ (“Sayings of the Fathers,” a compilation of ancient wisdom that appears in many Hebrew prayerbooks), “It is not given to you …
I have — as we say here on the left coast — trust issues. Not the mundane kind: I’m happy to give most people the benefit of the doubt, and more often than not, they prove trustworthy. I’m content to trust the roads to hold me and the sun to rise tomorrow morning. No, I’ve …
One of the strongest obstacles to positive change is narcissism: our proclivity to give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, based on the feeling that nice people like ourselves couldn’t possibly be doing bad things. In the public arena, this is especially easy to see if you follow the way our leaders use the word …