Dear Steve 2025, Has the way we care for one another improved? Are you still devastated to see mentally ill people, psychotic and disheveled, lining
Dear Friends, Thank you for being a part of this year’s of Jewels of Elul. I hope that you found the introspections from the past
What if we weren’t afraid to ask the hard questions? You know, the ones that compel those of us with privilege to reflect honestly about
As I write this, news just broke about the Trump Administration’s policy separating children from their parents who are seeking haven in the United States.
One day in fourth grade, the rabbi visited our classroom to teach us the V’ahavta in Hebrew. The V’ahavta is a prayer which commands us
Sarah: What if. This is the start of stories we tell ourselves, ingraining our fear of the yet unknown. What if I never fall in
What if my father was an optimist, a romantic, one who insisted that man is innately good? What if he saw only what he wanted
Throughout Jewish history, we’ve been called the People of the Book, a people dedicated to understanding the manifold elements of Torah and applying it to
“Arise shine for your light has dawned” -Isaiah 60:1 For each of the seven weeks leading to Rosh Hashana, we read special Haftarah’s that are
If we were able to see our pasts with total clarity, we would remember a time we weren’t carrying the emotional burdens of regret, recriminations,
What if in our teshuvah we focused on being ‘translators’ of God’s tradition? Eliyahu HaNavi revealed in the Gemara: When we say the words יהא
In 1994 I wrote a song that asked “what if god was one of us”. Twenty four years later I have no answers, only questions.
What if? Two little words that inspire children to dream and scientists to ponder. For my family, we could ask “what if” when we think
I was raised in a toxic environment. I spent 20 years of my adult life addicted to drugs and alcohol. I lived on the streets
A decade after the genocide, Rev. Cecil Murray was in Rwanda with researchers from the center I direct at USC. He visited a Christian organization
What if we only ever listened to leaders in positions of formal authority? When Martin Luther King Jr. said he had a dream, what if we
What if we believed that, one day, we were going to die? What if we could imagine our final moments? Most of us don’t really
Being the daughter of Holocaust survivors, I have often appreciated how incredibly optimistic my mother always was, despite everything she lost — her father, her
What if the boys of Pointe du Hoc did not climb? What if the The Flag was never raised above Mount Suribachi? Near my iMac,
What if you grew up in the small suburb of Parkland, Florida, as a normal kid, Hebrew teacher, lifeguard and youth group president with aspirations
We are all aware of things about ourselves that we want to improve, but what about the things we’re not aware of? How can we
On a recent trip to Israel I rented a car. Driving in Israel is harrowing. Driving in the Holy Land can be anything but holy.
As a public educator and activist, who is also: a formerly Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic rabbinic student, who formerly lived as a man, and now lives her
What if each nation devoted itself to building a unique civilization, an experiment in what it could be like to be human? What if the
Every day I ask myself: What if Matthew stayed home from school that day? What if he had skipped baseball practice? What if I had
I recently challenged members of a Florida synagogue who were polarized politically: “Take someone to lunch who voted the wrong way in 2016,” I said,
Elul 5: I Have a Few Questions ~ Rick Lupert
I speak to each of my parents every week, on occasion maybe twice a week if there is something particularly unusual happening in one of
Sometimes, a Broadway show is not just a performance. It is a dream set to music. That was my experience when I saw “The Band’s
What if the planet wasn’t round What if the silence had a sound What if we took our paradigms and flipped them upside down What
I like to play around with gematria, a kind of playful reflection on Jewish letter/number coincidences. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet has a numerical
Life is composed of finite facts and infinite possibilities. Part of the art of living is to take the possibilities and elevate those which enhance
A few months ago, I went out to lunch with Bruce, an old friend, who asked me “what it would take to bring back Jewels
Produced by Craig Taubman for
with the support of
Produced by Craig Taubman for
with the support of