Simply put, Teshuvah is the act of return. The first and most immediate questions then are: return to where and return from where. The distance between ourselves and God is best understood as a kind of alienation. We have let our actions grow into an obstruction between us and God, and that obstruction has made it uncomfortable for us to speak.

I did not expect to learn about Jewish history in Maine. My family there is not Jewish, but when I read Yiddish literature that describes devastating winters in Eastern Europe as endless miles covered in white, tundra-like nothingness, I am always reminded of how my mother describes her rural childhood in Maine.

אין אוניװערסיטעט, אַ באַקאַנטער האָט מיך געעצהט אַז איך זאָל װערן אַ חזן, נישט קײן רבֿ. איך האָב דעמאָלט עס גערעכענט פֿאַר אַ באַלײַדונג. פֿאַרװאָס נישט קײן רבֿ? איך בין נישט גוט גענוג, קלוג גענוג? 

According to Jung, the process of Individuation is the journey one must take to discover or rather remember ones true Selves. The only way to do so is to confront our Shadow and access our unconscious.  

Last Sunday, after fielding perhaps too many questions over the previous week, I took a few swigs of Yemeni Adeni Chai, let the caffeine flow through my veins, and typed out seven pages of questions that Rabbis Hollander, Rosenfeld and I had heard at least five or more times each over the years. Rabbi Hollander provided some key input on the books, but the Chai provided the stamina for me.

Everyone of us lives our lives with a mixture of joy and sorrow, ease and suffering.

After reading Love’s Work, I texted my chevruta who recommended it to say that I disagreed strongly with Rose’s account of Judaism: non-belief, absent from nature, characterized by reason. Her account seems to understand Judaism through Protestantism, which Rose herself acknowledges as the path that defined her re-entry into Jewish tradition.

What does it mean to say Shabbat was “last made, but first planned?” Let’s consider Alkabetz’s idea that Shabbat is a person, a queen. The personification of this day is not unique — it is the core of Kabbalat Shabbat as a concept, in which the Kabbalists would wait in the fields to welcome the Sabbath bride. 

Rabbi Lew was committed to the observance of Halakhah (Jewish Law), but when the rigidity that he held to the Halakhah came up against his sense of the dignity of human life, he turned. He was not in the vanguard of bringing the Queer community into the mainstream of Conservative Judaism, but he worked very closely with Kenny Altman, the first openly gay president of a Conservative congregation and would have performed Gay Marriages if his health hadn’t forced him to retire. His traditional practice gave authority to his departures from it.

Yes, Montesquieu did write about the separation of government branches but the main idea coming out of The Spirit of Law is that what matters for the freedom of citizens under a certain rule is not necessarily the form of their government but rather, their spirit.

I am deeply familiar with the axis of anxiety and belief, not through the experience of something genuinely threatening and traumatic such as illness, but in the much more mundane experience of fearing something indirect and unnameable.

Sami Elmaghrebi was a symbol of Morocco itself. In the 40s, he was one of King Mohammed V’s favorite singers, and in 1955, started his own record label in Paris.

The OPE (in English: Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia), concentrated the efforts of the leading Jews of St. Petersburg to improve the lives of the Jews of the Russian empire.

According to the Zohar and according to the Torah, humans were created in order to make choices. 

We visited the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, which is large, has multiple stories, and highlights episodes from throughout Jewish history in diaspora. One case held medieval Jewish wedding rings, which are shaped like tiny gold houses built on top of rings ornamented with fine jewels. The room regarding Ottoman Jews contains beautiful hats, clothing, and jewelry; across from a glass case holding earrings and arm cuffs is one full of silver rimmonim, the silver hats that adorn the tips at either end of a Torah scroll.

I think it would not come as a surprise to those who know me, or have at least read a few of the columns that I have written here, that “art” is one of recurring concerns. However, my underlying concern is not specifically fine art. Rather it is to see in the world the signs of expression, of the expression of the life force in the objects around me, a voice unrestrained by the decorum of social interaction.

In reality, all forms of clinging really do require an internal transformation. A person must choose to leave their parents to find a mate. A person must become sensitive to the needs of others to have a friend. As a partner, we must change to stay compatible with them.

So far there is very little haunting even to be found here, at least to my perception. The sensation of absence and a lost, sorrowful time is supplanted by anhedonia, a failure to feel the presence of anything Jewish absent or present.

I’ve been keeping tabs on the different Jewish businesses that have been popping up, with the dream to make a directory for “Jewish Downtown.” Jewish Downtown as a concept is a strange one as far as ethnic tourism goes because the Jewishness of Downtown is extremely deep historically, but there are no obvious markers of any of it. The Jewish history of Downtown is best found in books, maps and directories from before the 1970s. The living Jewish Downtown of today is found in mysterious nooks and crannies, far from prying eyes.

The source of all prayer is in awe rather than in desire. The easiest place for us to experience awe is in nature. Hopefully, you have had this experience. Picture postcards can render these experiences trivial. A spinner rack with sixty different views of Niagara Falls and fifty identical examples of each is an empty experience next to the power of the Niagara river as it swells up right before it shoots over the edge. Awe is a product of our radical amazement when the wonders of creation confront us.