The religious philosopher Mircea Eliade speaks about religion as attempting to transform the chaos in our world into the cosmos. Essentially, he says that we take that which is unknown — that which can be different and scary — and try to make it known. We...

We must have become numb to gun violence. Hardly a day goes by without another mass shooting in a school, shopping center, place of worship or public square. We don’t even know what qualifies as a mass shooting these days. Deaths attributable...

We marked Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Memorial Day, on April 17-18. I don’t remember the details of the story, but I do remember some of the names. He was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. We met him on sabbatical to Israel, mid-’90s. I was studying music...

What moment was the G.O.A.T. in Jewish history? We often focus on our “lachrymose history,” tallying up tragedies, expulsions, destructions, and slaughters. It might be harder to come up with good moments. There is a certain intense relief and...

Have you ever opened a book that was so technical and so outside your realm of understanding that you found it difficult to get through? Like the words were all in English, but you were reading without understanding a thing?  For many people, this perfectly...

These 22nd and 23rd sections of our annual cycle of Torah readings (Vayakhei-Pekudei) opens as the Israelites are commanded to observe the Shabbat. Moses continues his acquisition of donations from the people to continue the construction and...

A student’s arrival on a college campus is often accompanied by a great deal of uncertainty. Students must adjust to a new environment, new schedules, and a new sense of freedom and autonomy. In response to these changes, students, even those that go...

If you are a person who values attention to detail in the clothes that you wear, then Parshat Tetzaveh is the portion for you. In this week’s portion, we find an elaborate description of what Aaron, Moses’ brother, is commanded to wear when he...

In parashat Terumah, following the exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, G-d requests that the Israelites now build a sanctuary so that G-d can dwell among them.  Per G-d’s request, Moses asks the people to bring gifts - things...

The last line of parashat Mishpatim reads: “And Moses came into the cloud and went up the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights (Exodus 24:18)." Don’t you want to know what Moses sees up the mountain? In the Zohar, the...

“Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought Moses’ sons and wife to him in the wilderness, where he was encamped at the mountain of God. He sent word to Moses, ‘I, your father-in-law Jethro, am coming to you, with your wife and her two sons.’ Moses...

Why can’t we all just get along? Why can’t everyone else see things the way I see them?” It is so obvious. Or so we think. We remember it as if it happened yesterday: “Then Moses held out his arm over the sea and God drove back the sea...