I began to see the words, the Hebrew typeface we call block print, as actual bricks, walling me off and keeping me out. I felt myself fuming. I felt tears welling up. But as I stared at this wall, my mind wandered to the Greek myth of Pyramus and Thisbe. Next door neighbors, lovers from feuding families. A chink in the wall was how they saw and heard each other, and how they carried on their love affair.
Read moreKi Tetzei - Consolation for the Desolate
Like all queers of my age, I lost countless friends back in the 80s and early 90s. The best minds of my generation, as Ginsberg might have said. But then the reprieve set in and lulled some of us into a blessed and well-deserved forgetfulness. And now, it seems, is the time for waking up. Because I've now reached the age where the normal bell curve is beginning - the first of my peers dying at disappointing but not quite tragic ages, victims of long Latin names that translate loosely to "natural causes."
Read moreWaiting for the Carob to Bloom
So what are the carob trees that were planted for us? The ocean voyages of long-gone grandparents looking for a better life, if not for themselves, then for those who would come after? The love of learning implanted in our psyches 70 generations back?
Read moreParashat Chukat: Talking to the Rock
The idea that Creation came into being for our benefit is a central belief in the Chasidic world. Of course we see the world differently. Not created for the People of Israel. Not created for People at all. Still, we are the centers of our own existence, and we insist on living. So we struggle to find a balance between hubris and humility; between asserting our right to survive on the planet and the caution to mind our place. (We are reminded of the insight of the Chasidic rabbi Simcha Bunam, who said everyone should have a piece of paper in his right pocket saying, “For my sake the world was created” and a piece of paper in his left pocket saying, “I am but dust and ashes.”)
Read moreShlach Lecha: On Grasshoppers, Giants & Flotillas
But nothing in our tradition has taught us how to hold power. How to be giants. Instead, we’re left to be giants who think like grasshoppers, or grasshoppers who have grown to gigantic proportions. And it is that constant, deep fear of being crushed underfoot that has informed and, arguably, poisoned so much of our policy in Israel.
Read more
Quisque iaculis facilisis lacinia. Mauris euismod pellentesque tellus sit amet mollis.