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…

A few days ago, I took my boys on a pilgrimage to Leonard Cohen’s gravesite in Montreal. We winded our way up and down Mount Royal, crossed some Canadian mud patches with only one ruined pair of pants, navigated through one Catholic cemetery, then another. …

Something beautiful took place this week in Albany. Seniors and disabled people joined their home care workers to occupy the capital demanding a living wage for home care workers. Most of us have had a chance to see home care workers in action. It’s a hard job, demanding constant compassion…

In order to praise our existence with a full throat one has to be a prophet, a poet or suffer from some other form of insanity. Today, with the sophisticated ways of modernity, the ancient way of a complete succumbing to wonder, is too often replaced with a complex type…

133 years ago last night, a fire broke out in a schnapps distillery in Odessa. The distillery’s manager, also the son in law of the owner had other plans that night. But Asher Zvi Ginsburg rushed to the distillery that he hated running. He tried to assure his father in…

Other than the very real concerns of people with loved ones in Ukraine, and the dread we are experiencing for what is happening and what this may bring, this war has made me question whether our children are growing up with the proper disdain for, and hatred of war. This…

All the third-grade Hebrew school students would line up and prepare for our favorite monthly ritual, the Pointless Adventure. The excited laughter would die down and I’d lead them silently toward some irrelevant part of the synagogue building that they had never been to. We might go to the back…

I had the privilege of sitting on a rabbinical court for a conversion yesterday. During the ceremony I asked the young woman what she is carrying with her from her previous spiritual traditions into this stage in her life. Her answer surprised me with its simplicity. “Kindness,” she said. We…