Sublime

This is something I love about Judaism: When Temples fall, we don’t just stand around trying to make sacrifices at the ruins. We retranslate our tradition to create something more enduring.

Tzedakah lies close to the core of what it is to be a Jew. So much so that the rabbis said, ‘If someone is cruel and lacks compassion, there are sufficient grounds to suspect his lineage.’ Not to give is prima facie evidence that one is not a Jew.

Being where we are rather than where we think we should be or where we wish we could

So much of leading well is feeling supported by the congregation,

as Rabbi Jay Michaelson puts it, that “what appears to the mind as Being, appears to the heart as God.”

rabbis as teachers are in critical demand. And after a year running Hadar, I knew that my life’s focus was not only to build one specific community but also to spread the model of Empowered Judaism.

Responsibility is response-ability: accountability to an authority beyond us, in the here-and-now.

Second, Shabbat can help us fight consumerism, materialism, and workaholism.

The prohibition on embarrassing another is one of Judaism’s cardinal sins, they say, and one should sooner die than transgress