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...

"Did you drop something?" is usually the reaction I get almost every Shabbat from at least one congregant at the end of Shabbat morning prayers upon exiting the sanctuary. This is because of the practice that I was taught in my youth and still adhere to. It actually appears in the small print at the end of some prayer books. Read more...