Commentary - Blog
Psychedelics or Zohar?
Psychedelics have informed my spiritual journey way back when. In the 90s, way before my Rabbinic ordination, I had the unusual privilege of joining my Rabbi and spiritual teacher along with his colleague in smoking the ganja (weed) before a Kabalat Shabbat event. Undoubtedly, with the mind altering substance's help, this became a very meaningful...
Read MoreThe Shahid’s Sanctuary – a critique of Zoosman’s “The Cost of Revenge… Israel’s Response to Hamas”
Dear Cantor Zoosman. Thank you for writing the thoughtful and provocative piece “The Cost of Revenge, A Cantor’s Critique of Israel’s Response to Hamas”. I admire your activism toward the elimination of capital punishment. I have been following your Ohalah posts on the topic from afar. If I wasn’t already overextended I would be active...
Read MoreA Hawk, a Dove, and Hamas True Motivation
My friend and colleague, Rabbi Jan Salzman, said shortly after October 7th 2023 that there are both a Hawk and Dove residing within her head and heart in equal measure. I believe many of us can relate. We are living through a challenging time in which previously set assumptions about life in Israel and about...
Read MoreHandling Tragedy During the Month of Adar
In Tractate Ta’anit, it is stated: "Just as during the month of Av we decrease in joy, so too, during the month of Adar we increase in joy." Indeed, the sages instruct us to encourage and amplify joy not only on the days of Purim itself but throughout the entire month of Adar. Just recently,...
Read MoreKama Tov Sh’Baata Habayta Welcome Home
Shalom Hanoch sang in 1988 “Kama Tov Sh’Baata Habayta, Kama Tov Lir’ot Otkha Shuv… How good it is that you have come home, how good it is to see you again". In those innocent days of the 1980s, we have not yet truly known the meaning of national longing for hostages and the immense joy...
Read MoreUnity Above All, The Israeli Challenge
One of the greatest challenges in Israel these days, besides the grief for the many casualties, and the anguish over the fate of the hostages, is the fragility of our unity. This fragility began before October 7th, as we all remember.In Parashat Yitro, we read the words of Moses' father-in-law to Moses (Exodus 18:20-21):"And you...
Read MoreIsrael Palestine, The Elephant in The Room
Have you ever noticed that when we, Westerners, discuss the motivations behind the Israeli Palestinian conflict, there seems to be an “elephant in the room”, an awareness that hovers in the space but all pretend doesn’t exist? The elephant is the role that religious ideologies and religious sentiment play in perpetuating the conflict. The details...
Read MoreAncient Rabbi Ben Zakai and fasting on Yom Kippur
The Hebrews or Ivrim עברים discovered YHVH, the divine presence, while in the Desert. During their journeys they encountered the threshold between this world and the world of spirit. They recognized the limitations of the material world and the vastness of the spirit world. They named this spiritual threshold Adonai אדני, which derives from the...
Read MoreIt Takes Everyone To Holistically Manage A Pandemic (part 1)
The campaign to vaccinate a nation during a pandemic has brought into sharp relief a dimension that we, individual-freedoms-loving Americans often resist, that of the “common good”. “In ordinary political discourse, the “common good” refers to those facilities… that the members of a community provide to all… in order to fulfill a relational obligation they...
Read MoreIt Takes Everyone To Holistically Manage A Pandemic (part 2)
(Continued from part 1) GREATER THAN OUR PARTS Scientism, or Reductionism, which currently frames our reaction to disease in general and to COVID-19 and its variants in particular, has also been a strong motivator for civilization’s progress during the past century. Reductionism, Materialism, and Isolationism, at the time of their emergence in the eighteenth and nineteenth...
Read MoreIt Takes Everyone To Holistically Manage A Pandemic (part 3)
(Continued from part 2) EINSTEIN’S INSIGHT Not enough is known about how to handle the COVID-19 pandemic in spite of a century long history of reductionist medical successes, including past vaccination campaigns. We have been caught by surprise by a new magnitude of health crisis. The pandemic apparently is revealing critical fault lines in the reductionist...
Read MoreNot Guilty, But Not Right!
A society and its culture are measured amongst other things by how it regulates killing. The recent not-guilty verdict for a teen shooter claiming self-defense raises great concern about the direction of our American society. We can learn a great deal from the experience of the ancient Israelites. Their law allowed killing, even when forbidding...
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