Jewels 2017

One year, my Yom Kippur sermon was on the theme of forgiveness. The next day, a woman came to see me, very upset about the

My son was nestled in my lap last night, slumbering at last, while I trolled the Internet for entertainment. Somewhere in a moment between status

Fifteen years ago I experienced a serious bout of depression that was devastating and painful. The mental anguish and the hopelessness that entered my world

Age has been on my mind all my life. When I was a kid I had a giant shock of black hair that was like

It’s hard to believe that G-d hasn’t been watching out for me when I’ve had so many obstacles with drugs, rejection and people not believing

I’ve learned the difference between being purposeful about an issue and being self-righteous about it. I have been self-righteous about too many things in my

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

The world is a little too full of “can’t” — and there’s not enough “why not?” What’s more frustrating than to be told a problem

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,

A woman spoke with me after her double mastectomy. She couldn’t accept her body. We sought a new metaphor. Your chest is a sacred altar,

I recently reflected on the fact that I had been happy for a sustained period of time. I don’t mean that sense of happiness attributed

The first Shabbat in Elul, two weeks after my father’s death, my family gathered around the Shabbat table. Everyone was home from summer camp and

ELUL – the alliteration of this beautiful word evokes love. The word is composed of the first letters of the phrase from the biblical Song

Just as the courageous Zionists who established the State of Israel were energized by Theodore Herzl’s dictum, so do Americans draw inspiration from the notion

I have officiated at more than 500 funerals and held the hands of many loved ones as they slipped away. All of my spiritual training,

Bill Gates said recently, “Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy,

Genuine compassion is irrespective of others’ attitudes toward you. But, so long as others are also just like myself, and want happiness, do not want

What I have learned thus far is that we all can and must keep learning all the time. We learn from experience, we learn from

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that we should live our lives as if painting a work of art. When I first read this as a new

It’s when you’re all around a dinner table. / Sitting. / And talking and laughing. / When nobody has their phone on. / When dinner

When I was in 8th grade, Mr. Ben Yudin, my comparative religion teacher extraordinaire, asked the class a question. “What are the four words you

According to the Rosh Hashanah ritual of tashlich, we toss scraps of bread into a living body of water, symbolizing the casting away of transgressions

“Ready or not…here I come!” As the mother of three girls, this is a familiar refrain in my household. When we play, I think about

“Clever” seems eager to begin at Homeboy Silkscreen and, at 22 years old, he has assured me he is ready to retire his jersey from

The instructor filled an empty jar with rocks. “Is it full?” Then he poured a pitcher of pebbles into the jar. “Full now?” Next he

The month of Elul is a time for introspection, rebuke, and apologizing. Therefore it’s with a bit of embarrassment that I ask for your forgiveness.

Each year as Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur approach, we are reminded that sin creates distance. Distance creates factions. So we proclaim the unity of

“I wear prayers like shoes. Pull them on each morning to take me through uncertainty.” writes Ruth Forman, contemporary poet, in a work called I

I almost never dream. On that rare occasion when I do, it’s the typical dream that Freud would be proud of. I fly through the

When is the right moment to sit and contemplate the difficult times we encounter? Why don’t I just get in touch with those things that

In the spring of 2005, Eva Robbins commissioned me to write a setting for Psalm 27. At the time, I had no idea why she