This week’s Torah portion, Hukat, begins with the parah adumah. The Israelites are instructed to bring a red heifer who has never borne a yoke. The priest takes it outside the camp and offers it, burning it along with hyssop, cedar wood, and something crimson. Its ashes are kept for making mei niddah hatat, “waters of lustration,” used to “purify” someone after contact with death. (More on that in a moment.)  This is weird, and not just to us. Rashi observed that the nations of the world would taunt us about the oddity of this law, which is why it’s called a hok. Hukim are the cat ..read more

The High Holidays aka Days of Awe aka Yamim Nora'im are meant to be a pinnacle of the Jewish spiritual year. But what if the words in the mahzor (high holiday prayerbook) don't move you? Or what if you're not a synagogue-goer? Or what if you're a visual thinker, or looking for inspiration in a different way? Images speak their own language that can reach the heart in ways that text may not. Enter Bayit's Visual Mahzor project, a volume of art inspired by the texts of the Yamim Noraim / Days of Awe. Curator Justin Sakofs solicited art that arises out of the Torah and Haftarah readings for ..read more

  We've reached light's peak but that doesn't mean everything is downhill. The riverbed to loss is well-carved. Keep your cup brimming. Even if you can't name the tree of white blooms it flowers anyway. Volunteer wildflowers take defiant root. Learn from them and from this profusion of petunias, silent orchestra of purple trumpets in riotous array singing color and light ..read more

Reading B’ha’alotkha this year, what jumps out at me is Pesah Sheni. God spoke to Moses saying, the children of Israel should make the Passover offering at the appropriate time. Except there were some people who couldn’t make the offering because they had come into contact with death. So they came to Moses and said, what about us?  Moses asked God, and the answer he received was: anyone who couldn’t observe Passover at the right time, because of an encounter with death or because they were on a long journey, can make the offering at the next full moon. (Num. 9:10-12) In other words: if ..read more

The Torah of knobby roots protruding from sandy earth. The Torah of watch your step in every language at once. The Torah of Duolingo lessons teaching me to praise God for Duolingo lessons. The Torah of my heart, a fragile paper balloon buoyed by candlelight. The Torah of silence, broken by an unexpected dance beat. The Torah of small cats. The Torah of photographs. The Torah of chlorophyll singing its exuberant chorus across these green hills. The Torah of saying what's true. The Torah of uneven stones and wildflowers between them. The Torah of tracing this curving path, trusting it goes where ..read more

"A Drop in the Ocean" by David Parker. I talk to friends in Israel. They tell me everyone knows someone who is connected with the hostages. About the protests outside the Prime Minister's house. How the hostages are on posters everywhere, in public art pieces everywhere, how theirs have become household names even for those who didn't know them. How every baby they see reminds them of Kfir Bibas, kidnapped at 9 months, now 17 months. Some of them tell me how it feels to send a son or daughter or sibling or grandchild off to fight Hamas, knowing that some will not come home again. After eight ..read more

Trudging on treadmills and surrounded by vacuum, tired of freeze-dried anything we'll kvetch: why did you bring us out here to die? Was the climate crisis really so dire? Like our ancient ancestors craving cucumbers and melons, the thirsty tastes of fertile crescent, nothing to eat but manna every blistering day. Maybe a captain, frayed to the end of his connector cable will snap: I can't anymore with you ungrateful wretches, go eat hydroponic lettuce until it comes out your nose. What liturgies will we write remembering this green Eden? What revelation will we receive in ownerless wilderness ..read more

If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments, I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit…you shall eat your fill of bread and dwell securely in your land. (Lev. 26:3-5) In the past I’ve read these opening verses in part as an environmental teaching. If we live in a way that’s aligned with the mitzvot, we’ll be laying the groundwork for a healthy planet. Last week’s parsha Behar (often read as a double portion with this week’s Behukotai) talks about the mitzvah of shmitah, letting the earth rest i ..read more

Dinner table conversation about the vast currents that warm European waters slowing. I imagine great swaths of American south so hot a fall on asphalt burns while Britain ices over. The second one, at least, hasn't yet come to pass. In the morning I daven asher yatzar, gratitude for this body that mostly works: the vessels stay open, the organs stay sealed. I tell myself no matter what there will be generations to carry this prayer forward. Though in a time of mass extinctions (and no one actively hates the frogs or mice or insects the way some people persist in hating us) I'm not so sure. I d ..read more

A colleague mentioned that they are taking time away because of the particular exhaustion and grief of trying to serve a divided community after October 7. I wonder how many of us can relate to that. There's the pain of October 7: still reverberating in almost everyone I know, whether we're there or here, no matter what our politics. I don't even want to write about the nightmare of that day. There's the pain of the war that has followed. I know that it's laughable to speak about that from the comfortable vantage of here. But watching what's unfolding in Israel and Gaza hurts the soul. I don't ..read more