Published in These Holy Days: A  High Holidays Supplement After October, Academy for Jewish Religion, August 2024. My Dear Children, Oy! Such a year this has been for you and Me. I have seen everything and share your horror. I have heard your pleas that I have mercy on those who are in captivity and…

from Seder Interrupted: A Post October 7 Haggadah Supplement Published by the Academy for Jewish Religion, Passover 5784/2024   Know well that your offspring shall be strangers in a land not theirs, and they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years… and in the end they shall go forth with great wealth. —The…

Published by T’ruah, March 2024   Unlike the Exodus, the Bible’s archetypal redemptive narrative, the theology of Esther puts the responsibility of saving us from our enemies in human rather than divine hands. As a consequence, the story raises challenging questions about how we respond to those who rise up against us, and how we…

A D’var Torah for Rosh Hashanah 2022        From climate change and the erosion of democratic norms to the resurgence of antisemitism and the fight for human rights, one thing is clear: If despair triumphs over hope, we’ll never overcome the challenges we face. Hope enables us to envision a better future and…

Sept. 2, 2022 marked the 25th yahrzeit of Viktor Frankl (1905-1997), the Austrian psychiatrist who was an inmate of Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Kaufering III and Türkheim and lost his parents, brother and wife in the Shoah. Man’s Search for Meaning, published in 1946 and the second of what would be his 33 books, chronicled Frankl’s observations of…

Do not believe that the future is written. It isn’t. There is no fate we cannot change, no prediction we cannot defy. We are not predestined to fail; neither are we pre-ordained to succeed. We do not predict the future, because we make the future: by our choices, our willpower, our persistence and our determination…

Is there a distinctive Jewish take on hope that you discern in your book? Choosing Hope argues that because we are created in the Divine image human beings possess the power, the creativity and the responsibility to fulfill our deepest hopes. The Bible and the traditional Jewish prayer book often look to God to fulfill our deepest hopes. From…

A talmudic midrash about Miriam reminds us that the season of our redemption is also the season of our hope. As they celebrate Passover, many Jews take the opportunity to remind ourselves of the many ways the world still needs redemption. It can be a despairing exercise, but if we let that paralyzing emotion overtake us…