Authentic, Compassionate Judaism For The Thinking Person

I relate Jacob's dream of the stairway to heaven and his dream of God-wrestling to the therapeutic uses of psilocybin to treat PTSD, depression, addiction, and end-of-life fear.  

The stories of Jacob being defrauded by Lavan are taken to be the plot of the famous period of Jacob working for Lavan for 20 years before fleeing in the middle of the night.  In this teaching, I show that this is a misunderstanding.  Jacob has worked for 20 years for Lavan without being paid, but only 6 of those years are for Jacob and his arrangements with Lavan!  The first 7 years are to earn money that goes directly to Leah, and the next 7 years are for the money that goes to Rachel!  The story is about THEIR being defrauded!  Why does everyone miss this?  The reason is that we misunderstand Jewish marriage:  when we read a Ketubah, when we read the literal meanings of the Jewish ceremony, we presume this is an acquisition of the woman like she's property being transferred from father to husband.  But that's a misreading:  the dowry --which comes from the father or from the woman herself-- is added to the "bride price" (money paid by the man), and the sum of these are then given to the woman in a kind of

Does our system -- oaths of office, public promises, judicial decisions-- depend on fear of punishment or a different kind of fear [a reverence for God]?  Why do I not cheat on my taxes?  Why do I make excuses for policies that benefit me, and even double down on them?  The commentary on the lying of Isaac (and Avraham) written by Rabbi Yitzchak ben Moshe Arama, the "Aqedat Yitzchak," from late 1400's Spain, gives us a clue how to proceed forward in repairing out broken system.

Jewish law demands we bury our dead, yet human nature is to "protect the mourner in their grief" by distancing them from doing the act themselves.  Jewish law follows suit by, over time, taking the demand to lovingly care for your dead and creating distance from that to "protect" the grieving.  Rehearsing Rilke's opening from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge, Rabban Gamliel's decrees on simple loving burial (despite our natural inclination to use "do whatever rich people do" as our definition of "honoring" our dead in burial customs), the reawakening to these truths during COVID's guidelines for not touching bodies, and the archaeology of burial caves and ossuaries, I synthesize a different approach. 

The Rabbis see Sarah's laugh (at the divine prophecy of a pregnancy) as thumbing her nose at God and at her husband, now that her "period" (or "sexual enjoyment" -- edna could be translated as either) has ended "in the way of women" at a certain age.  I've always found the Rabbis overwrought in their interpretation of Sarah's laugh, but in this podcast I take it seriously.  I use the article (I just discovered) of Sandra Tsing Loh from The Atlantic in October 2011 called:  "The Bitch Is Back: Are menopausal women mad, bad, and dangerous? Yes—but they’re really just returning to normal."  It's a review of Dr. Christiane Northrup's landmark book The Wisdom of Menopause.  In that landmark book, the "thumb your nose at the expectations of your husband and of others" experiences of perimenopause are not looked at in their typical negative light, but rather as a "coming into your own" as a woman, knowing what matters for yourself, unwilling any longer to comply with the expectations of others.  This is the way I s

This is a full-on "sermon" (delivered on Rosh Hashanah, "the Birthday of the World," in 2020) in which I look frankly upon the Sarah and Hagar narratives -- mistress and slave/servant/mother-- through the lens of the issues of "privilege" we are processing today.  Schleiermacher -- among the half dozen most influential theologians in Western thought-- correctly argued that a certain consciousness of the gift of life is the fundamental basis of all true religion, leading to humility, passion, grace, and a connection to God-- yet in the Genesis narratives it does not lead to all these great things, it instead leads to an unfeeling competition for resources, and deep division.  Sound like America today?  I take us through the intricacies of the narratives, of the interplay of power and powerlessness, of the nub of this country's divisions through one true story from my life, and to a potential spiritual resolutation through another true story from my life, ending with Hannah (the haftarah on Rosh Hashanah) break

Shemini Atzeret has the special distinction of being all of the following:  1) The only holiday that has no official traditional explanation.  (Atzeret means some form of gathering, but we are left to speculate whether it's a special harvest ingathering, or a human gathering at the end of Sukkot, or a kind of makeup "extra day" of Sukkot for those who arrived late, but all these are speculative:  no reason is given.)  2)  It's still one of the four High Holidays (the others being Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot) and is a real holiday unto itself, and 3) It concluded the High Holiday period.  One dwells in the sukkah but does not say a blessing for doing so.  Shemini Atzeret is very special and odd. In this short podcast, I try to explain it as the confluence of different ways of experiencing time.  Biblical scholars for decades have reflected on how the book of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) views time as circular while the Torah and Prophets view time as linear (leading to a Messianic horizon).  In this podca

The pandemic has forced most of us into a "Shabbat," a ceasing, a forced limitation on our time and resources, and yet we are faced with demanding decisions that have no clear right and wrong, and lots of risk in all directions.  How do we allow this year to give us the gift of getting 'comfortable with discomfort' (rather than the "discomfort with our comfort" that we usually have)?  In my own life, I use Greg Mckeown book on practicing "Essentialism."  I share how I do that, and how you can, too.

Deuteronomy repeats that God tried to demonstrate how to walk with God when our clothes "did not wear out, nor your shoes" during the journey in the wilderness, as we learned that we "do not live on bread alone."  During the pandemic, I've noticed that I wear three sets of clothes:  Zoom clothes, non-Zoom clothes, and Shabbat clothes, and as we've slowed down our pace and we're not running around during this endurance stretch until a vaccine, we are --as Ibn Ezra interprets the "true" miracle-- realizing we walk with God in our slowing down, in our living the simple life, and we realize the craziness of an industry that has brainwashed us into a fashion industry of disposable clothes and environmental devastation.  Can we go back to having just a few sets of clothes that you wear all the time?

In the section of Deuteronomy customarily called "Shoftim" (which means both "Judges" and "Leaders"), we find the famous command that "Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue" but strangely without reference to the pursuit of social justice, community organizing, or even the personal awareness of victims.  Instead it might mean that people in that position begin the process by focusing on the emoluments clause and their oath of office.  What if our personal Torah, our personal scroll we carry around with us and occupy our minds with every day, was not the entire Torah but just our oath of office?  What would this tell us about the Torah's message to healing ourselves and our society?

The Rabbinic Commentators focus on the fact that Deuteronomy frequently and repeatedly uses the word ach, brother, to describe the needy person who isn't related to you.  Whereas earlier in Torah, we are told not to oppress the "poor" or "afflicted" person, Deuteronomy modifies this language by insisting that we must loan to these people because they must be seen as our "brothers and sisters."  I don't see any reading possible other than that the Torah is focusing on the problem of redlining, of consciously or unconsciously avoiding loaning money to people who look different from the family of the loan officer.  In 2020, the Trump Administration has proposed changing the anti "redlining" guideliness in ways that bypass the Torah's concern, as I explain here.

Recently Rabbi Andy Kahn and Comedian Seth Rogen broadcast loud statements that Jews have been lied to and that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel.  On the heels of these statements, the Jewish people in 2020 are going through the lengthy portion of Deuteronomy conveying both a demand of conquest and a moral framework.  Can we learn from what the Torah is saying?  Is the term "indigenous" just another progressive bludgeon that can mean whatever the twitterer wants it to mean?  In this podcast, I explore a way forward.

The Book of Numbers is about the failure of "community" in the wilderness.  After all the community building of the Exodus, of Mount Sinai, of familial and tribal ties, of building the Mishkan, of the inspiring blueprint for a new society in a land of milk and honey, of Moshe's leadership, of being in God's physical presence, of communal ritual feasting and celebration... none of it has worked, which, when you think about it, is absolutely amazing!  In this dvar Torah, I give my answer as to why by looking at the common issue of the Miriam/Cushite incident, the 12 Spies catastrophe, and the Korach rebellion.  The word "religion" is based on the word "religio" -- bonds.  What is the bond that holds people together in community?  It's not belief, it's a certain kind of emunah, a kind of faith that normally is translated as "trust."  Trust is built through face to face communication, not shared experiences or shared beliefs.  The lack of it is breaking apart society today, and we may not be able to turn back the

Psalm 23 is usually read as about a dead person getting to go through the valley of death and then live in God's house, but I read it, like the Mourner's Kaddish, as about a living person who goes through the experience of having a loved one die and transforms one's life from being in the depths to rising up to a life of living in this life in God's house, at the table in front of one's foes.  I demonstrate this with two poems by Langston Hughes on how he, and all of us, will be part of a movement to change America so he sits at the table in God's house in front of those who would not let him sit there before.  It's the positivity bias of Caleb and Joshua, of seeing a future that one makes happen.  The key to it all is that faith in God, and faith in oneself in bringing about God's purposes, are practically indistinguishable according to Torah.  You bring about living in God's house.  We all need to do that with America.

The first verse of Numbers chapter 12 famously has Miriam "speaking against Moses on account of the Cushite woman he married."  Though I most often hear people say that this means that Miriam was a racist who is complaining that Moses married a foreign black woman (either Tsipporah or a second wife), that is NOT the traditional understanding of the Rabbis.  it's the opposite:  Miriam is standing up on behalf of her black sister-in-law.  Still, the commentaries are frustrating.  I rehearse Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Rashbam, and the Bekhor Shor medieval interpretations as they could be read as full of enlightenment for us now, or as cringe-worthy -- just as Miriam's statement in the first place.  And it's in that fact that we derive our lesson.

On Erev Shabbat, May 22, 2020, the press was filled with the White House's call for people to go to church and synagogue right away, this Shabbat, the Shabbat when we Jews begin the book of Numbers, the parashah of counting.  In this ten minute sermon, I reply to the president's call, using the wisdom of our Torah and our Sages as we consider what that would truly look like, and how we count in this time.

In his essay in The Atlantic, Adam Serwer proposes that our self-understanding of the social contract is revealed by the decision-making process about the pandemic, as he writes that “the pandemic has exposed the bitter terms of our racial contract, which deems certain lives of greater value than others.”  I compare his views to that of the end of Leviticus and of The Book of Ruth, which both demand that shared resources are understood to come from God, and that we overcome our picture of earned inequality and instead the privileged share their blessings freely, not with strings attached that preserve serfdom and servitude.  Honestly, hasn't the pandemic revealed that those in power view the economically deprived as needing to serve those able to telecommute?  Aren't the terms of our social contract that their "liberty to work" and "be heroes" really is a self-serving rhetoric because we want them to serve us by putting their lives at risk?  Leviticus would have us pay the nanny not to work, because she is an

In this lecture from my series on "The 8 Most Misunderstood Things in the Bible," I tackle Leviticus's preoccupation with "uncleanness" and "impurity" that seems to stigmatize and isolate women, the sick, and others.  It's one of those things that make people pick up a Hebrew Bible and say, "This stuff is barbaric and misogynistic."  I argue that this is likely the parade example of misunderstanding Torah, based on misleading translation and the human being's inherent penchant for presuming metaphysics (invisible mechanisms that operate like they're physical but we just can't see, hear, or touch them?).  Using the philosophical therapy of philosophical Pragmatism (found in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty), I present "tamei" not as "uncleanness" but rather as "time-out," a state in which one is required to take grief leave, maternity leave, medical leave, and, for one week a month, sexual leave.  We can learn a lot from the Torah's insistence that these can only

In this lecture, I present one of my "Most Misunderstood Concepts in the Torah"... Revelation.  What does it mean that God speaks to Moses?  What is the revelation of Torah?  I present the philosophical frame for this debate, beginning with Descartes and Kant and then the devastating critique of them by Nietzsche, and later Wittgenstein and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.   How do we avoid the betwitchment of our language in such crucial areas as "I think means that I cause my thoughts" or "If I experience God, then God is an object of my experience?"  How can we become closer to Torah through breaking out of our silly thinking and coming to a more subtle, meaningful, and common sensical identification with revelation?   The quotes used may be viewed by clicking here.

When Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu suddenly die by fire while offering the first sacrifices, we have an odd series of verses that seem to suggest --on the surface-- that God has glorified Godself by killing them and now God demands that Aaron show no grief for his own sons also for the greater glory of God.  What?  Do the verses really say this?  A closer look (helped by the commentator Sforno), shows us what's really going on:  there are times when we glorify God by choosing to do our jobs (when lives are at stake) over allowing ourselves to feel our feelings of grief, of anxiety, or fear.  What seems so unfeeling of God, so self-glorifying and cruel, comes alive to us now:  we are only told to postpone our fears, our emotions, our worry, our wailing, our mourning, when we find ourselves (even unbidden) in the chain of operations meant to save lives.  God even bestows a personal word of loving care to Aaron:  don't turn to the bottle, another message so important at this time.