• Etrogcello for Tu BiShvat

    Updated: 2012-02-08 12:00:00
    Remember last Sukkot? The sound of cornstalks rustling on the roof of my car as I drove slowly home from Renton's farmer's market. The trees on our hills still bright with fading leaves. Carrying my lulav and etrog out to...

  • What I Carry

    Updated: 2012-02-07 08:01:12
    for Dale It was said of Reb Simcha Bunim that he carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one he wrote: Bishvili nivra ha-olam -- "for my sake the world was created." On the other he wrote:...

  • Torah poems for this week's portion, Yitro

    Updated: 2012-02-06 13:32:01
    I'm not writing weekly Torah poems this year. (Perhaps not surprisingly, I'm finding that balancing a congregational rabbinate and mothering a two-year-old is keeping me plenty busy!) But in years past I've written poems arising out of this week's Torah...

  • 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...

  • 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...

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