You see, even though we've come to associate Leviticus with sexual taboos and suspiciously fixated Bible-thumpers, it is meant to be something different. A holiness code, a ritual system, a guide for moving cleanly through the human world and for bumping shoulders respectfully with the Divine. In this tome are sensible and easily supportable laws of human-human conduct: caring for the poor, loving your fellow, resistingthe allure of hatred. And it contains business ethics as relevant today as 3000 years ago: paying your workers on time, using honest weights and measures, judging fairly. And yes, there's sex stuff too - a sexual ethic that addresses, in the thinking and language of the time, proper and improper relations - many of which we would still consider improper. It's this sexy bit that gets the most press, and has arguably unleashed more harm than anything else in our tradition, through the disproportionate literalism with which it continues to be read in some corners.
Read moreFrom the Valley of the Shadow of Death
It's good to be home I think. Although I am suffering from performance anxiety tonight, wondering how to even form words at this moment. Because I am freshly back from shiva, having dusted and vacuumed and locking the door behind me on the house I grew up in, a house only ever lived in by Kellers, standing now without occupant for the first time since 1958. A house that, like me, has undergone a great loss but doesn't yet feel that way.
Read moreBest Friends
My sister Lynn's eulogy for my mother yesterday.
Read moreJewish Goodbye
One of six eulogies delivered today to say farewell to my mother, Marilyn Keller.
Read moreHoly Ground
I know the long traverse from bedside to bathroom to lobby to cafeteria. I love the cafeteria food, even though it’s not really any good. I look at the beige, crusted over fettuccini with vegetables, and I think, “Oh, it’s a bad night for the vegetarians.” I think that until my eyes wander over to the tuna casserole and I realize that it’s a bad night for everybody. But the food here is cheap and made with sincerity, geared to feed hungry healers and anxious families, and I can taste that straightforward intention. Less than four bucks later, I’m back in Mom’s room, with a paper bowl of salty beans and rice and another of carrots and, fortified, I can feel the kitchen staff at my back in this great recovery campaign we’re waging.
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