Our Torah portion this week, Nasso, contains the priestly blessing, verses that are very difficult to translate experientially. For...

I am always a bit perplexed by those troubled by the passage in this week’s Torah portion where God is depicted as hardening Pharaoh’s...

Torah Portion VaYechi 2017 (adapted from 2016) When I was a graduate student at USC, I frequented a nearby supermarket with a deli...

It is time for my annual “Christmas sermon.” Instead of sidestepping the holiday, I see the Shabbat nearest Christmas as an opportunity...

(adapted from 2016) If you understand psychoanalysis, you can understand the basic worldview of the Kabbalah. The original meaning of...

Of all of sublime indications that “the Bible is literature, not journalism” the subtle threads exuding from this week’s Torah portion...

In the Torah we are taught to love God, "with all your heart, with all your soul and all your might" "b'khol levav'kha, b'khol nafsh'kha,...

I can imagine Jacob bemoaning his fate, justifiably. Jacob was the one, the Bible tells us, who was the dweller in tents. The Midrash...

Polonius, in Shakespeare's Hamlet, is presented as a sincere, but also as an insufferably garrulous and "tedious old fool." The...

Avivah Zornberg, in her wondrous book The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, zeroes in precisely on the existentialist...

"God tested Abraham . . ." These words begin an awe inspiring narrative, just one chapter in the Bible (Genesis 22) - small in length but...

If anything, Abraham seems to have been a compulsive figure. Suddenly picking up and leaving everything like that. Neurotic, Freud would...

This week's Torah portion, Noah, has a verse that has become a foundation for the spiritual and mystical approach to prayer. In Genesis...

The rabbis of the Talmud don't agree with the beginning sentence of the Torah. The book of Genesis begins, as it is usually translated,...

(adapted from 2016) I am one of those who accepts the idea of “natural religion.” This belief does not mean the worship of the natural...

Most of you reading this have turned your lives around, at some time or another, in a big or small way. We were headed in one direction,...

I've reached my seventh and final topic of wisdom as we close in on the Days of Awe. Remember, these different ideas are not stages of...

Traditionally, at Rosh HaShanah we wish each other a "good and sweet year" (shanah tova umetukah). In more modern circles, the wish has...

It has been hard to stay focused during these turbulent times, from the recent outrage to the recent tragedy. I think some events propel...

We have entered Elul, the month preceding Rosh HaShanah. The core theme of Rosh HaShanah is the Sovereignty of the Divine. The inner...