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Tonight is a special Shabbat: It is the 7th annual Refugee Shabbat (HIAS) . Right now we are seeing terrifying scapegoating of immigrants and refugees. This is a Jewish issue. Biblically we are told “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 23:9). More than that, we are known as the wandering Jews,…
Tu B’shvat is the New Year of the Trees. It’s a great time for a winter walk! Where I am we have a ton of snow. I just went out and saw pretty snow, trees, and a deer! The natural world reminds us that life has cycles. A time to rest and a time to rally. The former gives rise to the latter. We say about the wintery trees “the sap is rising”. What is rising in you? From today’s walk - a snowy river…
I hope you are doing ok. As the conflict in Israel/Palestine rages on, and waves of grief keep coming, I know folks are feeling beleaguered and overwhelmed. I feel it too. I hope you are making space for rest, beauty, even joy. Those are the building blocks of peace-making, always. I’ve also been overwhelmed by some life challenges particular to me (nothing too serious — all of it is…
Secular Synagogue has been coming together over the past week, sharing our feelings and offering each other mutual support. It is sad that I haven't felt safe or comfortable to make our gatherings public, even when I know many people are in need of community right now. Given the landscape, I've wanted to keep things within the community, to protect our tender hearts because they have already been…
At Rosh Hashanah I spoke of living a life from our heart’s centre. It has always puzzled and even upset me that, at Yom Kippur, Jews beat their chests while reciting the Ashmanu, the accounting and recounting of communal missteps or, more traditionally understood, “sins”. We beat and berate, for where we went wrong as individuals and as a community. Later in our service we will do a version of…
The Turing test is a series of measures to identify whether machines, or artificial intelligence, can match or eclipse, essentially become indistinguishable from, human intelligence. This past year was the first year that many of us had access to generative artificial intelligence, such as Chat GPT, conversing with and even perhaps being assisted by our computer in new ways. We already had Siri…
Happy Purim! Secular Synagogue had an amazing poetry event this past weekend! So much talent in our little group. We had someone compare their funny looking hamentashen to their experience of being told they “don’t look Jewish” which resonated so much with a thought I had about misshapen hamentashen and how we all need to just “Jew it our way” : We had people share socialist Yiddishist poetry…
At Rosh Hashanah we spoke of trying to focus more on being than doing this year. That many of us are feeling particularly exhausted and while we want to be awake to the pursuit of justice, as the Shofar demands, we might be rethinking what justice looks like and how we show up. Unjust systems of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, as bell hooks calls it, demand for us to be continually…
I guess I can describe it as brain fog. I am not sure whether it is linked to having had Covid, being exhausted in our third year of a pandemic, no longer being motivated by stress (a goal from the shmita year!), but I am finding it hard to sit and write. My books are strewn all around me for inspiration, many are Jewish in nature, many about the high holidays, many books of poetry, many of my…
I hope you are feeling well and happy at the start of September/ Elul (Hebrew month). I have a particular fondness for the fall. As someone who has always been starting a new school year as a student or teacher or both, I look forward to the "starting fresh" feeling of fall. So much the more so as we get ready for the special, sacred, and soul-enriching time of the year: Rosh Hashanah and Yom…
