Anna Smith

It is an exercise in what Wiesel’s friend and teacher, the great Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, spoke of as the religious calling to be maladjusted with positive moral force, neither indifferently conformed to the reality of evil and suffering, nor inured to wondrous and redemptive possibilities we can make real.

this is open source learning.

On a dark day, or a hazy one, everything’s washed-out and lackluster but the water. It carries its own lights.

While it is an exaggeration, I am not sure it is all that far off. Every statistic around obesity and chronic diseases borne out our sedentary lifestyles is sobering. It isn’t surprising – the more we solve for comfort, the worse our health outcomes become.

It’s closest to Mount Sinai. It’s closest to the origin. But it’s really the white space around the edges that ultimately is most important, because that’s where we get to write our questions, and we get to expand and grow and evolve a tradition that, without us, would have long since become either dormant and rigid, or would’ve disappeared entirel... See more

The sharks disappeared as each wave rolled toward me; then a new wave would swell above the horizon, containing in it, like scorpions in amber, sharks that roiled and heaved. The sight held awesome wonders: power and beauty, grace tangled in a rapture with violence.