• A lovely review of 70 faces in Lilith!

    Updated: 2012-02-02 13:15:56
    Deep thanks to Lilith, the awesome magazine of feminism and Judaism, for the generous review of 70 faces, my collection of Torah poems (Phoenicia Publishing, 2011). The review appeared in the Fall 2011 issue, alongside reviews of poetry collections by...

  • Second post at poetree: on poetry, Judaism, and being (or not being) a religious poet

    Updated: 2012-02-01 12:06:16
    My second post is up at poetree -- On poetry, Judaism, and being (or not being) a "religious poet". Here's how it begins: A bit more than ten years ago I took my MFA at Bennington. It was an amazing...

  • Living in Jewish time

    Updated: 2012-01-31 16:24:14
    It's a funny way of inhabiting time, this Jewish calendar of ours. Every seventh day a holiday. Every new moon a holiday. And then, studding the year like jewels in a crown, the festivals, each with its own music, its...

  • A thank-you from Temple Beth-El of City Island

    Updated: 2012-01-31 13:27:17
    Earlier in January, a dear friend's shul was vandalized and broken-into. I posted about it, and generous readers contributed $984. Here is a thank-you note from the leaders of that shul, to all of you. To the contributors to Reb...

  • Hosting a conversation about spiritual life and poetry

    Updated: 2012-01-30 14:17:19
    For those who are interested in poetry conversations, feel free to check out the online poetry community poetree, where moderator J.J. Hunter has graciously invited me to host conversations this week. (Luisa Igloria, whose work I greatly admire, was poetry...

  • Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach 7.2 - abridged AND expanded!

    Updated: 2012-01-26 19:00:21
    Hey: did you realize that Passover begins in just over ten weeks? :-) I've been working this winter on a revision of the Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach -- specifically, a revision which is suitable for use at my congregation....

  • Interview with Linda Hirschhorn now in Zeek

    Updated: 2012-01-25 12:00:00
    Two years-and-a-bit ago, at the ALEPH Kallah in Ohio, I had the opportunity to sing with Linda Hirschhorn. While I was there, I interviewed her for Zeek. (I mentioned that in one of my blog posts from the conference that...

  • Sounding the Shofar of Social Justice

    Updated: 2012-01-24 13:17:48
    I met Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz several years ago when we were students in Yeshivat Hamivtar, in Israel. As those who know him personally would surely attest, Reb Shmuly is a fiercely passionate, creative, and independent thinker. I was honored when he asked me to review his forthcoming book, Jewish Ethics & Social Justice, for Jewneric.

  • New essay in Religion & Literature: "Transformative Work: Midrash & Fanfiction"

    Updated: 2012-01-23 15:12:14
    Contributors' copies of Religion & Literature volume 43.2! The genre is an ancient one. Throughout the history of the Diaspora, Jewish imagination has flourished through midrash, elaborating on the tales and characters of the Hebrew Bible. But the postwar period...

  • Jewish Renewal and my red boots

    Updated: 2012-01-23 02:17:17
    I am utterly, endlessly, delighted to have sparked Rabbi Barbara (Shulamit) Thiede's essay Jewish Renewal's Red Boots. Reb Shulamit and I were admitted to the ALEPH rabbinic ordination program at the same time. (Somewhere I still have the email which...

  • On plagues and hardened hearts (d'var Torah for parashat Vaera)

    Updated: 2012-01-21 16:03:00
    Here's the d'var Torah I'll be offering during services at my shul this morning. This week we read one of the most dramatic narratives in Torah: the story of the ten plagues. (Or, at least, the first eight plagues; the...

  • VR Podcast Episode 1: Morning Practices

    Updated: 2012-01-19 22:37:23
    Several of y'all have asked, over the years, whether I have considered podcasting. This winter, I thought I'd give it a try. I'm not promising that these podcasts will come out on any specific timetable. (I'm a congregational rabbi and...

  • A psalm for wintertime

    Updated: 2012-01-19 12:00:00
    WinterPsalm WINTER PSALM The wind whips spirals of snow dervishes dancing across icy asphalt snowplows call out to one another backing up to ply their routes again the atmosphere looms, pregnant with the promise of precipitation and I? I scatter...

  • Stop SOPA and PIPA

    Updated: 2012-01-18 12:00:00
    Image borrowed from this post at storify. Many of the internet's leading websites are "going dark" today to protest, and raise consciousness of, the danger of the impending passage of SOPA and PIPA, two pieces of US legislation which run...

  • Contemporary poems for Shabbat morning prayer

    Updated: 2012-01-17 22:34:23
    This coming Shabbat, I'm planning to lea...

  • Passing the virtual hat for a vandalized shul

    Updated: 2012-01-16 01:15:45
    Just before this past Shabbat, a small shul in New York City was broken-into and vandalized. The shul is Temple Beth-El of City Island -- "your shul by the sea" -- and its spiritual leader is Rabbi Shohama Wiener, the...

  • Names, and opening our eyes

    Updated: 2012-01-14 17:54:11
    Here's the d'var Torah I gave this morning at Congregation Beth Israel. (Originally posted at the From the Rabbi blog.) In this week's Torah portion we re-enter one of my favorite stories, and one of the deepest stories, about Moshe...

  • My second smicha

    Updated: 2012-01-13 15:04:42
    Getting my wings. Photo by Janice Rubin. At the Ohalah conference of Jewish Renewal clergy this year I was ordained a second time, as a Mashpi'ah Ruchanit -- a Jewish Spiritual Director. This journey began three years ago, with the...

  • Three Tu BiShvat Haggadot (Tu BiShvat is on its way!)

    Updated: 2012-01-12 01:22:32
    The moon of Tevet is beginning to wane. It will shrink down to nothingness and then grow again. When it next reaches roundness, the date will be the 15th of the month of Shvat: the full moon of the deep-winter...

  • Dear ALEPH and Ohalah hevre

    Updated: 2012-01-11 03:03:38
    Dear ALEPH and Ohalah hevre, Y'all are awesome. Okay, I don't actually know all of you. Even after six Ohalah conferences, I don't quite know everyone in Ohalah, and it's a little bit surreal to discover that I don't know...

  • Yes. Palm Oil Truly IS Kosher.

    Updated: 2012-01-10 20:37:12
    It has become increasingly fashionable among some in my Jewish community to promote the notion that kosher food must be, what they call, “sustainable.” First, it is important to understand that kosher food laws are strictly religious in nature; it is a myth that they kosher foods are healthier, safer, or even cleaner than other

  • Rumi illuminating morning prayer

    Updated: 2012-01-09 08:28:05
    Sufi calligraphy; image borrowed from Rumi Online. You could be forgiven for imagining that all my rabbinic community does, when we get together, is pray. It's not true, of course. The Ohalah conference includes all sorts of plenary sessions and...

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