The traumatic effects of hatred are all around us. Killings, bomb threats, acts of violence and hateful rhetoric motivated by the evils of racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Muslim hatred, anti-immigrant hatred, prejudice and every other form of hatred abound....

“We are in the midst of a mental health crisis, and we are trying to deal with it in a proactive, integrated, eyes-open response,” Rabbi James Stone Goodman writesI was conversing with Maimonides’ father, Maimon ben Yosef, who introduced me, when...

A man goes on a business trip to a foreign country with his spouse. In preparation for this journey, he studies a bit about the culture, the people and the laws of the land. There is much to fear, though the reward of traveling there outweighs the fear....

I once shared Shabbat with a friend who had also invited several environmentalists. Someone raised a question to the group: What was or is your greatest environmental sin? I sat in the corner with a friend, bonding over our embarrassment at our lack of...

Words matter. Words can create or destroy — a life, a reputation, a relationship, a movement, a moment. And words can create worlds. The first words spoken in our world were, “Let there be light. And there was light.” (Genesis 1:3) Creation here...

“It is not happy people who are thankful, it is thankful people who are happy.”  I love these words and find them so fitting for Sukkot. Coming on the heels of the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe, Sukkot reminds us to stop, recognize the world around...

So you got fat [Deut.32:15]. God would have suckled you with honey from a rock and oil from a flinty stone, butter of cattle, milk of sheep, fat of lambs, but you became thick and kicked.You got private. You suffered silently. Well, you can always come...

Moses spoke to his successor, Joshua, and told him a couple of things, but what I remember most is the phrase “be strong and courageous.” I loved it when our teacher talked courage.Moses told Joshua not to be afraid, that G*d would accompany us, that...

“ . . . . and God will gather you in from all the peoples to which Hashem, your God, has scattered you. If your outcasts are at the ends of the Earth, your God will gather you in . . .”  — Deut. 30:3-4 Even if we are at the ends of the Earth....

In this week’s parasha, Ki Tavo, Moses instructs the Israelites on the laws surrounding the bikkurim, the first fruits. He tells the people, “When you come in to the Land … you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the Land … and put it...

Ki Tetze means “when you go out.” The people are standing before Moses, who is downloading, in one long song, his remembrance of years past and fervent hopes for the future.  They are standing at the edge of one world imagining, perhaps, the trials...

Yesterday, I was on the verge of correcting someone about something. I thought it would be too disruptive though, and embarrassing to them as well, so I held my tongue for a few minutes. Then, I checked the book from which I was going to prove myself...