The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse comes during the week of Vayishlach, and the painful Torah story of Dinah. What do these stories have to tell us about how our society looks at male violence? And how might we still see, hear, and heal Dinah?
Read moreYHWH Was in this Place
A prophetic dream helps Jacob recognize the Divine that is immanent in space. What do we need to do to have a zap of realization? It's easy when we're in stunning nature. Harder at the hospital.
Read moreChayei Sarah: Putting it to Rest
There is a moment
in this week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, that always catches me. A moment that always strikes me in the simplicity of what it says and in the vastness of what it doesn’t say.
This week we see Isaac and Ishmael, shoulder to shoulder, burying their father. How is it possible to resist the expectation to be enemies and let go of the past's hold on us?
Read moreA Witness of Angels
Maybe Hagar conjured the angel in a vision because in her suffering her thoughts were stuck in her head, and her fear caught tight in her gut, and she needed to be drawn out of herself; she needed to be witnessed from the outside, to witness herself from the outside, in order to make sense of her next steps. And she did.
Read moreOn the Sea
While our bodies are something like 75,000 cubic centimeters of saltwater, our minds, our spirits, are Oceans. It is comforting to be contained in these familiar bodies. But there is something in us that wants to be vast. This is, I think, why we live here, why we go to the Ocean when our spirits are low, why we dream of being on or in the Ocean. We want to recapture the sense of endlessness that our souls once knew.
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