The answer for me and many of my generation is, I think, to learn to see the invisible. I traveled to Poland three years ago. I was prepared to see the camps, and I was moved when I saw them. But weighing much more heavily on me, and staying with me even to this moment, was the immensity of what I didn't see.
Read moreEverything I Needed to Know About Passover I Learned from Knitting
"Passover" is not only the name of our Festival of Matzot and our description of the Angel of Death's detour when approaching an Israelite home in Egypt. It is also a knitting instruction. Abbreviated passo, It involves several minute actions. You make a stitch. You follow this with another stitch. Then you reach back and grab the earlier one. You pass it over and around the more recent stitch, pull it off the needle and let it go. Then you keep knitting.
Read moreParashat Vayikra: Reclaiming Jewish Guilt
If thy mother’s bulb burns out, and she sitteth in the dark, thou shalt not suffer her to climb the rickety stepladder with a flashlight, but verily thou shalt change the light bulb for her, yea, even without having to be asked.
Read morePurim and the Power of Unmasking
Born to a Sephardic family living in New England since before the American Revolution, poet Emma Lazarus was as assimilated as a Jew was permitted to be in 19th Century moneyed society. She politely didn’t press her Judaism, and her Judaism was, in turn, politely overlooked. It wasn’t until outbreaks of anti-Semitism on both sides of the Atlantic shook her comfortable world that she unmasked herself – writing poetry and essays on behalf of the Jewish people. And in doing so, she unwittingly drew to herself (and in some cases unmasked) a few of the Hamans of her time.
Read moreDifference, Disability and the Song of the Universe
Some of us have bodies that can’t keep pace with the activity of our minds or the desires of our hearts. Some of us have thoughts bursting like fireworks in our heads but which cannot find their way out of our mouths in the form of comprehensible speech. Some of our bodies pose staggering challenges for ourselves or for our loved ones. And still, our very existence is a song of praise to God, a Psalm to this Universe.
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