There comes a point, usually after enough disappointment, when the stories we have been telling ourselves about other people no longer hold. The person we counted on betrays us. The… read more

I want to share something beautiful with my non-Jewish friends this week, and that is the holiday of Shavuot, which we just celebrated a couple of days ago. Well what… read more

There are a lot of things I hear non-Jews say about the Hebrew Scriptures, but one thing I rarely hear anyone really grasp is how intensely practical they are. The… read more

In Judaism, the “evil inclination” is called the yetzer hara (יצר הרע), but that phrase is often badly misunderstood. It does not mean a demonic force inside you. It does… read more

I want to take a little detour from our regularly scheduled conversation and interrupt the flow with a more spontaneous message this week. In past sermons, we have dismantled illusions…. read more

I’m not trying to annoy anyone. It would be much easier to repeat the same tired clichés—safer, smoother, more comfortable. But honesty doesn’t live there. Easy words don’t move anything…. read more

This week, I want to take us somewhere we don’t usually go when we speak about G-d. We are used to looking upward. We speak about the heavens, about what… read more

I don’t have all the answers. In fact, a lot of the time I don’t have any of them. I don’t know what the world wants from me. Even if… read more

The Name as a Tree Last time we saw that the Name was withheld. Not erased. Not lost. Withheld. But restraint is only the surface. The tradition did not preserve… read more

Before We Speak of Names Where does our understanding of a thing come from? For most people who believe in G-d, it doesn’t come from study. It comes the way… read more

There are moments in history when confusion is normal. And then there are moments like this one. This is not just a hard time. Not just an intense period. Not… read more

The Betrayal of Jesus We all know that in the story of Jesus, he is betrayed. But the deeper betrayal didn’t come from outside his movement—it came from what followed… read more

Yep, it sneaks up the same way it always does. One day it’s late December, the next it’s a new year—fresh calendar, same questions. The world celebrates as if something… read more

There’s an old story that goes like this: A man is walking alone through the woods at dusk. The air is still. The light is fading. But as he walks,… read more

When I was a little girl, my mother used to call me the “Maytag repairman” because I was always taking things apart, trying to see how it worked, and putting… read more

I’ve been avoiding doing this because I already know some people are going to find it upsetting, and the last thing I want to be doing is upsetting people. But,… read more

I Am a Murderer. I don’t mean this as poetry or hyperbole. I mean it literally, as confession. Three lives ended because of me: a toad,  my friend’s dog, and… read more

What I want to talk about today is a subject that gets plenty of airtime, but often in ways that cause confusion or pain. The subject is sin. From a… read more

If you listen closely to the Hebrew Scriptures, if you read them not as isolated stories but as one long thread, you’ll notice something. The single most repeated command from… read more

The illusory truth effect Certainty doesn’t always come out of truth; sometimes, it just comes from repetition. It’s a quirky thing our brains do— we hear something enough times, and… read more