In season six of The Sopranos the king mobster Tony Soprano tells his psychologist what he learned from his recent experience taking peyote. “There’s something else out there.” His life is crashing in on him. His son just tried to commit suicide. Danger, death and difficulties surround him. “Like what,”…

Remember that time when you were eight years old and it happened and you were scared and you knew that who you are will not be the same? No, you probably don’t. You probably never will, unless someone reminds you of it, and points out your scar. This is what…

“We have to learn to speak Jewish,” said the activist rabbi. We were gathered in an Upper West Side living room to hear from Rabbi Arik Ascherman about the state of human rights work in Israel/Palestine after the elections. Rav Arik, an American born Reform rabbi has been living in…

I try to avoid electoral politics in my writing. I’m not a political authority of any type. But this week’s election in Israel carries both cultural and spiritual messages that are relevant to American Jews, and offer lessons for Americans in general. You’ve likely heard by now that the winner…

If you were a biblical translator but your Hebrew was hit or miss you might translate the sixth and seventh verses of the Torah as follows: God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. God saw that the light was %$*!, …

The last weeks of summer are a primordial state of mind. Summer has happened. The year is over, but the next one has yet to begin. We yawn our way through the yawn-like days waiting to be reborn, thrown back into the world. …

You’re coming home from work or from running around town. Your mind is busy. Your heart full of concerns. You unlock the door to your apartment and are about to step in. Your eye catches sight of the Mezuzah on the doorpost. You remember the first word in the scroll…

A conversion candidate asked me recently what to expect as a Black Jew in New York City. What, he implied, is the current state of the racism and exoticizing of African American Jews in Jewish America? The first story that came to mind is a hard one. Yehudah Webster, an…

The question is how do we respond to such a devastating week? One answer is: with a bell. (If you have one nearby grab it, it might come in handy.) A few weeks ago, I spent a couple days on a Zen monastery in the Catskills. Every time a bell…