Joining for Ourselves

/
Joining for Ourselves

In Pirkei Avot 2:4, we interrupt learning about the importance of doing God’s will with fervor to hear that, additionally, Hillel says “do not separate yourself from the community.” We learn in one breath that community deserves and requires as much effort as mitzvot, an astounding comparison. Some commentators tie it to our prayers, others connect it to the mitzvot that can only be done with a minyan. Community, however, is more than just these components - it is a critical element of an actively Jewish life. Even for many who are more removed from “traditional” Judaism, many still find themselves drawn to the aspects that revolve around community. Why would community be an essential part of religion? What makes it important enough to insert into a conversation about the individual’s effort to do God’s work?



Read More

The Holographic Jews

/
The Holographic Jews

The entire Jewish people are a single, perfect whole. 
—Zohar 

This lofty and poetic vision of unity as articulated in the Zohar has a modern-day defender in late author Michael Talbots book, The Holographic Universe (1991).  Within its pages Talbot focuses on the parallels of quantum mechanics and ancient mysticism as he compares the universe to a holographic image; an image that when 'dissected' does not give us 'parts of the whole' but rather 'the whole in each part.' A holographic image cannot be halved or quartered or dissected in any way. Each time you divide it, it merely gives you smaller versions of the original image! 

Read More

Let Us Not Turn Away

/
Let Us Not Turn Away

As I write this, in San Diego, a funeral is taking place for Lori Gilbert Kaye OBM, who was murdered by a 19-year-old at a Chabad during Passover services. You know of this event, and others like it. When such things happen, we might experience many emotions: sadness, fear, shock, anger, numbness. But we have one job before anything else. We must feel the immediacy of the event, we must overcome its seeming distance, we must know that it is our own family that has been affected.

 It is natural to protect ourselves from the pain of the world through abstraction. It is easy to put up layers of armor against the assault on our sense of safety, and our moral sensibility, through distance. But Torah calls us to oppose that distancing. It calls us instead to closeness.

Read More