My Question For The Modern American Jew
These are hard times we live in. The West fights the East, and no one knows who will triumph. On the one hand, the West. The West brings freedom to the world. The West is the civilization of philosophy and science, of democracy and tolerance. They fight because the world is benighted, enslaved, and backward. […]
When A Non-Jew Asked What I Believe
A friend who is not Jewish recently asked me, “What are your metaphysical beliefs?” This was the best answer I could give him: What do I believe? Well, I’m an ordained rabbi, so that should tell you something. By most outside evaluations, I am what would be called “orthodox jewish,” or even the semi-derogatory “ultra-orthodox.” […]
My Rebbe Is An Activist, But I’m Not
Even respectable chassidim agree that talk is cheap. I’ve heard them speak about it for hours at farbrengens. However, every respectable chassid also knows that the three garments of the soul, in descending order of truth/reality, are thought, speech, and action. So really, action is cheap. Maybe that’s why Jews love action. Oh, I’m not […]
We danced this week in the synagogues and in the streets. In Oregon and in Jerusalem we pulled aside pretty veils and dug into our boxes and took out our scrolls cloaked in majesty. Between the Jordan and the Pacific we danced our dance ’round the bimah, waging peace, raging joy. We danced in Oregon, […]
A Leaf In The Wind: Three Meditations
Ten Ways To Stay Sane This Rosh Hashana
The high holidays are a stressful time for everyone. They demand a lot of thought and preparation, mental and physical. For some, the holidays mean spending time with family, which is annoying. For others, they involve not spending time with family, which is worse. A lot of people have tons of cooking and cleaning to […]
The yellowed pages of the following missive were found under a pile of old photographs at a yard sale in Carmel, Indiana. A team of international scholars worked for weeks to translate the text, each of its paragraphs written in a different language, some of them long-forgotten outside of the academic world. It is being […]
I’m considering it. Elul is coming, you see, and the high holiday spirit is in the air. But all I can care about is video games. Obviously, this is unusual for a Rabbi. I ought to be preparing practically and spiritually for that time of year when Jew and G-d renew their connection. And now, when […]
How Transgenderism Points To G-d
Let me take just a minute and talk to my fellow religious Jews about transgenderism. As any user of the (dangerously addictive) site TV Tropes knows, there is a certain type of plan hatched by fictional villains called the Xanatos Gambit. This is a maneuver by which the bad guy so outthinks the good guys […]
A Browser Game That’s Good For Your Soul
“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” – G.K. Chesterton I’m sitting hunched over my strangely molded slab of metal and plastic, pressing at it and hoping for a response, desirous that something rescue […]