Who was at the table at your last Passover Seder, or seder when you were growing up? Take a moment to picture those people. How are they related to you - by blood, by common family, by marriage, by friendship, by need of a place to celebrate the holiday? Read more...

The first three Torah portions of Sefer Sh'mot (the Book of Exodus) are the three portions that invite us to exist in Mitzrayim (Egypt), and it is here that I would invite us to dwell one more moment, despite our natural eagerness to leave the place of our degradation and enslavement. Read more...

Often, minor miracles of our biblical stories are overshadowed by the grandiose. This week, Shabbat Shira offers another example of this phenomenon. The "primary" miracle this week is, of course, the splitting of the Red Sea. The image of the waters parting with millions of ex-slaves dredging through the muddy sea floor will never cease to capture our collective imaginations. But it is the (seeming) minor miracle, the journey to the water that fascinates me; that liminal space between slavery and freedom that draws me into its midst this week. Read more...

Those who read this column regularly will recall that last summer I wrote about my experience of visiting the Abayudaya community in Uganda. What I didn't write about at that time was my two experiences with darkness during our visit. The first - on Erev Shabbat in the village on Nabugoye Hill - when the electricity went out (as it does regularly in their community) in the middle of Shabbat evening services, and stayed out until Shabbat morning. Read more...

While there are multiple questions one could pose to this week's Torah portion, there is one question that I have carried with me since childhood that seems to elicit no interest from the classic commentators. I will begin by juxtaposing the two curious verses and then invite you to join with me in my "Jewish, textual Rorschach test": "If a household be too few for a lamb, let him and his neighbor next to (HaKarov) his house take it according to the number of souls" (Shemot/Exodus 12, 4) Read more...