Chesed, love. Yesod, foundation. Chesed she’b’yesod, love that’s the foundation! We all know love is the foundation. Children need it to thrive. To feel secure as they explore and learn. So they don’t see the world as a threat. And thus, defensively, turn on everyone they meet. Adults need love too. Because, at any age,…
Category: Political
Lasting Justice? Omer 24
Tiferet. Beauty. Netzach. Endurance. Tiferet she’b’netzach. The beauty of enduring things. Today I’m feeling contrary. So I’d like to talk about the beauty of things that don’t endure. Like cherry blossoms. And justice. Cherry blossoms first. Sophia Street is lined with late-blooming cherry trees. Well, today’s their day. Finally! Pink blossoms are popping open like…
Justice in Beauty: Omer 16
Gevurah. Justice. Tiferet. Beauty. Gevurah she’b’Tiferet. Justice within beauty. How does beauty hold justice in it? Well, there’s Plato’s view, that all ideals converge. The best things are good, beautiful, and just. So when we see something truly beautiful, it’s because we also see justice in action. Injustice is ugly, and we find it jarring.…
Noah the Activist
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…
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.…