It is really easy to be convinced that we are actually open to all the people and all the things, but we're likely more like Eisav - that is, more convinced of our rightness and therefore convinced that we don't need to be open - than we'd like to admit.

This first commentary on Likutei Moharan lesson 1 calls attention to what makes a person of Israel and Israelite - it is opening ourselves to the wisdom that is literally everywhere

I know for myself that having access to straight teachings from the holy books - not classes, but the teachings themselves - I would listen a lot. So here is Likutei Moharan Lesson 1 - my translation, minimal explanation. I hope people find it useful.

I'm about to begin (and hopefully, ultimately finish) the project of recording Rebbe Nachman's teachings so people can have them as audio files. There will be two kinds of podcasts - one in which I will read and offer a simple translation of a teaching from Rebbe Nachman's books, and one in which I will offer my own commentary on those teachings.

So it will be important to revisit some of what happened on Yom Kippur and carry it forward into the next holiday

A 13-year-old boy was beat up and killed and California. Oy. What sorts of attitudes and assumptions and values make that possible? (please note I recorded this in my car. Sound quality is not great, though definitely good enough)

Rosh Hashanah isn't all apples and honey. It's when we take steps toward unlearning what we have learned so we can live in an updated mind for a new world. And THEN we eat apples and honey.

This is my second attempt (thus the "point one") to articulate the reality that, for many people, teshuva doesn't have much to with the Torah. And I think that makes teshuva a) harder and b) way more abstract.

Once we've decided/realized that we have to take teshuva seriously, how and to what extent do we allow other people to indicate what THEY think we should do teshuva on?

Elul often evokes a very specific kind of activity or focus. I want to challenge us to subject that evocation to a bit of scrutiny. Maybe we shouldn't put all our teshuva-eggs into one teshuva-basket?