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 …
The “ownership society” paradigm the Bush administration invokes in its campaign to dismantle Social Security scares me in a very old and deep place, chilling my soul. When I feel the shiver, an image shimmers in my mind, fleeting as a reflection on water: an old woman, wrapped in rags, sitting at the mouth of …
In the time of the “values voter,” there’s been tremendous controversy over what “values” might mean (other than shorthand for self-righteous intolerance). What are our values as individuals and as a people? Whether or not we are fully conscious of them, each of us holds values that affect our perceptions and actions. The challenge is …
One mystical idea that interests me is that our experience in the material world resonates with a higher truth attached to the same moment in time. As readers of this blog know, it is my custom to follow the readings from the first five books of the Old Testament and prophetic writings assigned in the …
A couple of friends came over to help us celebrate the third night of Hanukkah. While I fried potato latkes, we talked about one friend’s difficulty in shaking post-election fear and despair — indeed, in facing the horrors of the daily paper. When the holiday began, she’d found herself thinking that lighting the Hanukkah candles …