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Spirituality and Mental Health
This was originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“Humans plan, and God laughs.”
This Yiddish proverb is not as impious as it might seem at first glance. It declares succinctly an undeniable truth of the human condition: We are not in control. No matter how meticulously we plan, there are innumerable variables for which we can't fully account.
Often enough, we plan, and things turn out the way we want. And then we are tempted to believe that we are in control after all.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/news/spirituality-and-mental-health
Posted on: 2016/06/10 - 12:00am
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Wherever We Let God In - DT Terumah SCR
In a famous Hasidic saying, the Kotzker Rebbe was once asked: “Where does God dwell?” to which he replied, “Wherever you let Him in.”
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/wherever-we-let-god-in
Posted on: 2017/02/22 - 5:56pm
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Trying to Limit the Divine - DT Ki Tisa
The overriding concern of the last portion of the Book of Exodus: how can one relate to God without shrinking God to the limitations of human insight and imagination? The bulk of the material, which begins with the Torah portion Terumah, deals with the intricate description of the construction of the Mishkan, the portable, tent-like sanctuary that was to be the spiritual center of Israelite life during the forty years of desert wandering.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/trying-limit-divine
Posted on: 2017/03/08 - 5:15pm
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Why Be Good? DT Ki TIsa
I used to have interesting conversations with a friend who had studied for the Catholic priesthood in his youth. We talked about questions of ethics and morality from the perspectives of our two traditions. In one conversation, I mentioned that Jews don't really concern themselves with an afterlife, that you can attend services year after year and never hear anything about what happens after death. My friend was shocked and asked, “Well, then, why be good?”
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/why-be-good
Posted on: 2017/03/08 - 5:09pm
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Torah as Puzzle - DT Ki Tisa
Reprinted by permission of the Cleveland Jewish News.
This d'var Torah is one of a series influenced by the Me'am Loez Sephardic Torah commentary.
In Jewish tradition, God is not so much in the details as in the relationships that hold the details together. Ki Tisa, this week's Torah portion, offers several outstanding examples of the temporal and spatial location of events described in the Torah portion.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/torah-puzzle-rearranging-parts
Posted on: 2017/03/08 - 5:06pm
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Light Through The Cracks - DW
Recently on the radio, I listened to the new president vigorously assert his belief in the effectiveness of torture. This is not news: he had made his views on the topic clear as a candidate. But this radio report was further evidence, piled onto President Trump’s intimidation of the media and his assertions that falsehoods are truths and truths falsehoods, that we are living in a new reality, where the leader of the free world champions the practices of despots and dictators.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/news/light-through-cracks
Posted on: 2017/02/01 - 2:51pm
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Coming Together - DT SCR Vayak'hel
Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan once taught that religious identity is based on the “three Bs” of believing, belonging, and behaving. Most religious traditions begin with a foundation of believing. Christianity, for example, is based in large measure on a belief in Jesus as the son of God, and the savior of human souls, on beliefs having to do with the nature of sin and salvation, and heaven and hell. Based on those beliefs, to be a good Christian requires certain behaviors that are the natural expressions of those beliefs.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/coming-together
Posted on: 2017/03/16 - 2:26pm
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Pekudei DT Schein
Traditionally, as we end a book of Torah, we both congratulate ourselves and resolve to study even more diligently in the future. We say hazak, hazak, v'nitkhazek: be strong, be strong, and strengthen one another.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/importance-vision
Posted on: 2017/03/16 - 1:59pm
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Vayikra DT SCR
Sometimes I think that our Biblical ancestors were a lot wiser than we give them credit for. Every year when we get to this particular biblical book filled with graphic descriptions of animal sacrifices and offerings outlining in detail such rituals as the sprinkling of blood on the altar by the priests, along with a virtual “how to” manual for slaughtering a bull or a goat or a sheep and offering it up to God in a highly ritualized drama, most readers (myself included) begin to cringe.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/spiritual-tools-leviticus
Posted on: 2017/03/23 - 8:14pm
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Drawing Close to Sacrifice - Vayikra DT Dannin
When Adar comes in, our happiness is increased. But when Vayikra comes in, we feel as if the Promised Land of great stories and heroes is far, far away.
Torah scholars through the centuries have tried to give us reasons to rejoice in these endless passages on the most minute and bloody details of sacrifices, but it is hard to say they have succeeded. Some point out that we are moving from a physical to a spiritual journey. After all, the book begins with the words “And God called.” Called - not just spoke.
https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/dvar-torah/drawing-close-sacrifice
Posted on: 2017/03/23 - 9:03pm
