Nations have a life of their own, behaving in ways few individuals would. Maybe remembering the angel of the collective can bring out our best.

Today is ten years since my mother’s death, and the haunting is sweet. She is gathered into me like Jacob was gathered into his people. The ancestors are in us. We are ancestors too. What traits and traumas, what hope or despair, openness of heart or resilience of spirit, will be gathered from us into those who come after?

Audio below.

The truth is I no longer even know what I’m crying about. At this point, I seem just to be yielding to the big blur of suffering.

I am walking around afraid. Not always afraid of something specific. My body is fueled by adrenaline and programmed by the epigenetics of generations of ancestors whose fear responses enabled their survival and mine. My soul has fluttered right out of my body. Is there any solid place where it can land?

The audio opens with the chant “My Protection” by Rabbi Shefa Gold, sung here by Ner Shalom Chantleader Atzilah Solot.

At the end of Torah, Moshe dies, after much struggle and resistance. Torah seems to take a breath, a long exhale, as we roll back the scroll to the beginning. And so in our lives as well, the exhale after the long-anticipated death of anyone we love. The gasp, the exhale.

For Yom Kippur, I explore what it is in our American Jewish soul – the longing, the fear, and the insecurity – that keeps us silent when Israel (and Palestine) are under discussion. Now is the time to find our voice. 

The Lurianic story says that Creation came about through a shattering of light-filled vessels. The primordial light is embedded in all of us. And our bodies and our separateness are all a kind of mask over an ancient, light-filled Oneness. How can we use that mystical insight?

Moshe is denied entry to the Promised Land. But he is invited to climb the mountain and look to the horizon and see what no one else can.

We are in the narrows now. Is that such a bad thing?

A drash reconsidering the Beyn Hametzarim – the three narrow weeks leading to Tisha B'Av.

Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day – celebrates the reunification of the City. But it feels anything but unified. It can only be honored as a vision, but a vision in need of revision.