Jewels 2014

Dear Friends, Thank you for being a part of our 10th year of Jewels of Elul. Hundreds of thousands of people accessed this years Jewels on

I was very close to my father, and his sudden passing was unexpected. A brief illness, a mistaken diagnosis. The lack of closure made it

At 12, I was a certified black sheep. Between my effeminate antics and my avowed nerdiness, I was desperate for a social miracle. Naturally, I

On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, I set out for Monk’s Pond to do my own tashlich. It’s a short hike from Kripalu, the

My parents’ marriage was a classic disaster. Often it felt like bombs were shaking our house, and the only safe sanctuary from the verbal shrapnel

I’m almost shocked at how little I remember of my bar mitzvah. I don’t recall my Haftorah reading, what the rabbi said, or what music

I thought I had come of age several times over by the time I reached my 30s. After all, I had become a bat mitzvah,

In 1972, around the time I turned 16, we woke up one morning to an extra-large headline: “16 TERRORISTS DIE DURING FRUSTRATED ESCAPE FROM NAVY

“Why would you go back?” asked my Austro-Hungarian-born grandmother in 1994, when I announced I would be spending the summer in the former Czechoslovakia. She

I lived in a beautiful bubble. A perfect little world. Sure, there’s lots of bad stuff out there. Sure, people are dying, they’re sick, and

My 55 years on this planet can be neatly divided into two periods: Before Parenthood (B.P.) and Since Parenthood (S.P.). Everything I, as a gender

Sometimes, reading from the Torah at a bar mitzvah only becomes a Jewish boy’s coming of age moment once he steps off the bimah, and

As a young girl growing up in California’s largest mosque, I always felt welcomed and included. Women were on the Board, my sister was president

Why is it that, when I catch my mother’s face looking back at me in a passing window reflection, I am filled with a sense

We are people who return. Each year we return to the beginning of the Torah and (re)-cycle our calendar, and each week Shabbat returns to

In college I was the “big man on campus.” Well, not all of campus… just Hillel. One guy always bothered me. He wanted the glory

This past November of 2013, I wrote my bar mitzvah d’var Torah about how the definition of traditional marriage has changed and advocated in favor

The last thing they took out of me was the Hickman line: a tube that had been tunneled under my skin through my collarbone, embedding

Blessed are You, Adonai our God, God of our fathers and mothers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, God of Sarah, God

Our tradition dictates, “Be fruitful and multiply.” I can do neither. When we read of Hannah’s inability to give birth, I cry Hannah’s tears. On

My “coming of age” moment was the day I stood in front of several thousand people, most of whom had known me since infancy, and

A few years ago, I went on a big group camping trip a week after a friend’s bar mitzvah. Not entirely satisfied with the traditional

In retrospect, my bat mitzvah was about nothing less than life and death. But it’s not when I became an adult. Girls at my synagogue

I know that I’m supposed to have angst about my bat mitzvah, but looking back on it, mainly what I see is a great party:

When I was first asked to write a piece regarding the “Art of Return,” I thought it would be easy. I would just write about

My coming of age story became the title song from my first album, Daddy’s Pockets. The lyrics are sparse and intense. People often ask me

In the book of Judges, we meet Samson. The ultimate Jewish man. His long flowing hair provided him with supernatural strength and turned him into

Growing up, my family didn’t have any coming of age traditions. No bar mitzvahs, no crownings, no sacrifice of a chicken’s head, nothing. There was,

Foolish, bad decisions I made during a reckless transition out of my adolescence led to my arrest on August 11, 1987. Prison gates slammed and

1978-2014. My younger self awaits me in that old home. He stares at the future that would be me; I ponder the past that was

Freud wrote of a repetition compulsion. He thought that we reenact scenes or situations in our lives in an attempt to get a better result.

The word for “return” in Hebrew is Teshuva. Teshuva is often translated as “repentance” although it literally means “return.” The sages understood that to achieve real