Itzik's Well Podcast - Irwin Keller

Gone a dozen years now, the flavor of my grief has changed, and memory is sweet.

In Elul, they say the King is in the Field. Kind of like Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.

We offer our teshuvah not out of obligation but because we love. It is because I love you that I want to be clean with you. It is because I love this world and the people in it that I want to make good on all the ways I have failed it and them. 

It seems I had to come to Ireland to be reintroduced to the prophet Elijah. For more than a week this summer, I have been on retreat at a Catholic hermitage in County Sligo run by a tiny community of Carmelite sisters and brothers. The Carmelites see the prophet Elijah as their spiritual inspiration and as the founder of their order. They call him Saint Elijah, and I happened to be there on Saint Elijah’s day.

What is the kind of prophet we need now? Can we find that prophet? Can we be that prophet?

An essay for My Jewish Learning’s Recharge Blog.

Perhaps in 2025, in this tug-of-war between loyalty and morality, resistance is the true shape of patriotism. Reflections on the 4th of July. Reflections on Fourth of July themes.

What if Torah tells it wrong? What if wandering in the desert was not a punishment but a chosen path for a people who did not want to become Pharaoh? An alternative take on Shlach Lekha.

It feels like there is so much being lost right now. But we still carry those things in us. Like Levites carrying crates of holy regalia. A consideration of Parashat Bamidbar.

The house is a kind of living being – our individual houses and the one we all share. How do we help it release its past and present suffering?

How do you tell the story of Purim in a time when we are already activated, when we are beginning to feel the breath of danger on the backs of our necks?

I wake up every day in fear. But I am not in any personal, imminent danger. This is the conditioning of my past and the dread of the future. But I am not the captive of my conditioning, and dread is not destiny. In this moment I am strong. In this moment I am needed. May I be of use.