Think about a time in your life when you felt excluded or left out of a community or group. Perhaps you excluded yourself, or perhaps others excluded you. Remember your thoughts and your feelings. Did you ask for help? Did you want someone to reach out to you, to stretch out a hand, to bring you back in? Read more...

We walk on streets and don't see the homeless folks. We work in our office and don't see the coworker who is abused. We don't see that the man who has been sitting next to you in synagogue for a year is gay and closeted and desperately wants to be out and welcomed. Read more...

In religion, it seems, there are few things in which we can hold absolute certainty. But, of this I am sure: ask a room full of people to share a moment in which they felt the presence of God, and most certainly many will identify the birth of a child as such a moment. When I speak to groups, and here the immediacy of this answer, I will often ask them to come up with another example, thinking that perhaps identifying the moment of a child's birth is the obvious or easy example. So, thinking I can offer a chance for intellectual and spiritual challenge, I will encourage another response. Read more...

In a world where we witness the suffering and malady of so many diseases, this week's double Torah portion of Tazria-Metzora leaves us wondering. With its focus on priestly ritual, the sacrifices and purity laws, the entire book of Leviticus is hard enough; yet, this week's topics of skin ailments and bodily emissions raises eyebrows and begs questions. From leprosy or other skin lesions to moldy houses to bodily emissions, the prescriptions for healing were similar. Read more...

Throughout antiquity, most people assumed that illness was a punishment from the gods. Incensed at some infraction of ritual law, pagan gods were forever visiting terrible diseases, sometimes to the point of death, on their worshipers. In fact, this tendency to attribute divine disfavor to any manifestation of sickness runs rampant in our society as well (although only for the illness of someone else!). Read more...