I’m delighted to share the video of yesterday’s launch of The Intercessor on Zoom. I was in conversation with Rabbi Diane Elliot, read several excerpts, and responded to questions and comments from those who attended. It was fun, especially if you like deep questions about real challenges as much as I do, and I was …
The public Zoom launch of my new book, The Intercessor, is on Wednesday, 29 October, at 5:30 pm ET/4:30 pm CT/3:30 pm MT/2:30 pm PT. On the launch I’ll be in dialogue with Rabbi Diane Elliot, I’ll read excerpts from the book, and we’ll leave plenty of time for questions and discussion. The conversations so …
A great soul passed this morning. Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow, scholar, activist, teacher, spiritual leader, and so much more celebrated his 92nd birthday on October 12th with a Zoom hosted by The Shalom Center, the organization he founded in 1983 and led until last year. The Zoom was also the occasion for sharing the two …
It makes me so happy to invite you to the official Launch of my new book, The Intercessor. On Wednesday, 29 October at 5:30 pm Eastern, 4:30 Central, 3:30 Mountain, and 2:30 Pacific, I’ll be joined by the wonderful Rabbi Diane Elliot. Here’s a little bit about Diane: As a rabbi and teacher, a Registered …
Life imitates art sometimes. The Intercessor, my new book, is a novel made of linked stories, each narrated by a different person. They all have one thing in common: the desire for spiritual community in challenging times. I did not set out to write another book. In the early days of the MAGA regime, I …
It’s been weeks since I listened to a New York Times podcast featuring Allie Beth Stuckey, a far-right, fundamentalist Reformed Baptist social media influencer and podcaster on politics, theology, and lifestyle advice. She is instantly identifiable as such by her look, featuring all the MAGA woman signifiers: the flowing hair streaked with blonde, the masklike …
I recently completed a new painting after a few months’ hiatus while I finished a book I hope will be published soon. As with many of my paintings, it was inspired by a text that struck me with great force, a teaching by the 18th century Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky, a disciple of the Baal …
Twenty years ago, my friend Daniel Burstyn introduced me to an exercise created for Passover, the Jewish holiday which this year begins on the evening of 12 April. The holiday commemorates the exodus from slavery in Egypt (“Mitzrayim” in Hebrew, which also means “straits” or “narrow places”). The tradition is to retell the story as …
I’ve had the same conversation with many friends in the last few days: what is wrong with the Democrats? Why aren’t they responding to the Trump-Musk emergency with the speed and energy required to stop them from (to use Steve Bannon’s repugnant language) “flooding the zone with shit” at “muzzle velocity” and drowning the body …
Last week I completed a painting I’ve been working on for many weeks. Its name comes from the text written on its face: “Over every blade of grass an angel hovers, whispering, ‘Grow, grow.’” This isn’t even close to an exact translation of the Talmudic text from Bereshit Rabbah 10.6 on which it is based, …