My husband has a cold, which creates tremendous respiratory sound effects in the wee small hours, giving me lots of opportunity for uninterrupted night thoughts (though we’re both looking forward to the return of his good health and uninterrupted sleep). I find myself drawn again to the questions of compassion I wrote about last time. …
A good friend visited last night from New York. He’s thoughtful and well-informed, so I always enjoy talking about social issues with him. As in so many political conversations these days, it wasn’t long before we got around to blowing each other’s minds with the surrealism of everyday public life. Starting with the baffling case …
It is said that the Passover seder is based on the type of Greek banquet-symposium described in Plato’s writing: dining at leisure, dinner companions explore ideas, rhyming philosophical and physical appetites and satisfactions. Each conversation is different, owing to the participants, yet all focus on the same epic of slavery and liberation. At our second …
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 to do with the …
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 …
I’m taking time off, as I wrote a few days ago, which means that beyond the non-negotiable obligations on my calendar, I’m doing only what I enjoy — nothing that feels like drudgery. One of the things I enjoy most is being reminded to keep my eyes wide open. Time off means that life suddenly …
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 …
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 …
This weekend I revisited the writings of Martin Luther King, looking for something to read in his honor at a gathering of friends. In my mind, he stands for eloquent justice in the face of stubborn privilege, and as far as it goes, that’s true. But taking him literally, he stands so much more for …
Have you heard the chorus of right-wingers blaming the “Jews and secularists” for ruining Christmas? One of the best pieces on this phenomenon so far is Frank Rich’s column in last Sunday’s \New York Times\. Here’s a taste: “‘Are we going to abolish the word Christmas?’ asked Newt Gingrich, warning that ‘it absolutely can happen …