What is activism? And is Noah an activist? Rabbinic Views of Noah Our sages don’t ask the question that way. Instead, they ask: how good was Noah, really. Torah says, “Noah was a perfectly righteous man in his generation” (Gen. 6:9). What does this mean? Should we be impressed at Noah’s moral compass? Because, even…
Category: Political
Neighbourhood Tensions Rise
COVID-19 has thrown some of us closer together. But not always for the best. At least, not in my neighbourhood. I live in Vancouver, Canada, in a trendy urban neighbourhood. Here, small one-family homes crowd close together. Old trees and thick hedges surround them. Crows, ravens, woodpeckers, and songbirds fill the landscape. So do racoons,…
End Times: How to Hope
Yes, we are living in the end times, says the prophet Zechariah. We are always living in the end times. So he tells us in his prophetic book, whose last chapter (14) we read in synagogue on Sukkot, the Feast of Booths. But Zechariah sees the end times as a good thing. Why? God, he…
Synagogue Life in COVID-19: Care, Conflict, and Teshuvah
A family friend of ours died this summer, from COVID-19 complications. I was the officiating rabbi at his burial. No tahara, ritual washing of his body, had been permitted. We, a small group of twelve, gathered at the graveside. Each of us wore a mask and disposable gloves. We stood six feet apart. After the…
Trafficking Biblical Women
Sex trafficking. It’s in the news. A Q-Anon theory that sex trafficking is rampant. And only Trump can stop it. After all, “he” arrested Epstein and Maxwell. Anyone can argue that this is factually false. (See below.) But I’m not going to talk facts. Well, maybe briefly. But then I’m going to look at human…
To see with sad clarity
Towards the end of the Book of Job, Job finally learns to see. He says to God: “Until now, I only heard about you. Now I have seen you” (Job 42:5) What does Job mean? “I heard stories about you, God. But all about things that happened in the distant past, not in the living…
Aliens on Our Planet
Aliens were trending on twitter yesterday. No, not terrestrial aliens like the ones in the picture. (However, I’ll talk about them below). But EXTRA-terrestrials, the kind from another planet. Apparently, the New York Times reported on them yesterday. Well, on efforts to learn more about them. The US Office of Naval Intelligence is studying UFOs.…
(Don)key to Redemption
The Biblical donkey is here, to talk about redemption. Especially about our role in it. So, let’s hear what the donkey has to say. Balaam’s Donkey King Balak of Moab hires the seer Balaam to curse the Israelites. Balaam is a dedicated follower of Hashem. So, when God comes to him in a dream and…
Land: One Indigenous Lens
Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Canada. A good day to share Indigenous teachings. And also to take them to heart. Use them to see differently. That, I hope, is a kind of de-colonizing. So, today, I’ll talk about sustainability. And about the spirituality of land. With a bit of Torah thrown in, too. Recently, I took…
Habakkuk: Day of Justice
Habakkuk, the biblical prophet. He sang about justice. And he wrote poetry, with big mythic themes. But he insisted on realism. Because he knew: change is hard. Habakkuk’s book has no date and time stamp. So we don’t know when he lived. And thus, we don’t know exactly which injustices he protests. Still, scholars have…