I spent this summer a bit differently than most of my summers have been.  Most years, I plan some big trip - across the country, across the world, by a beach, on the sea.  But, for the first time in as long as I can remember, this summer, I decided to stay at home and committed to exploring places in Los Angeles I had never been. Read more...

The synagogue where I grew up, Ahavath Achim in Atlanta, Georgia, had a gift shop with floor-to-ceiling windows displaying a varied assortment of items. Among my earliest memories of shul-going, I loved to look at the glittering kiddush cups and havdallah sets,magen david jewelry, ironic aprons and sports-themed  kippot sitting in the windows. Read more...

Here's the thing about transitions: Most of the time you don't know you are about to go through it until it has already happened. I teach a course for first year rabbinical students - it is a History of Jewish Philosophy - and one of the first things I tell them is that nobody ever knows the name of the period of time they are actually living through until someone decides that that period is over. The one thing they did not have in the biblical period was a Bible. Read more...

I was travelling with my family to Independence Hall, the Philadelphia locus of the American Revolution. In the middle of this storied courtyard stands a large bell. The entire world knows that bell. It was hung in the Philadelphia State House in 1753, and it sounded to summon the pre-Independence Colonial Legislature into session, and it was used after the Revolution for the Pennsylvania State Legislature as well. Read more...

By Western standards, Sukkot has to be the least spiritual festival. Rather than training ourselves to ignore the outside world, to see ourselves as merely passing through, Jews respond to the ancient story of liberation and wandering under God's protective care by accentuating the physical: we build booths made of plants, we wave palm fronts and carry large citrons, we feast together, we live in the outdoors. We celebrate and rejoice in our bodies and in this world. Read more...