This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei, has the distinction of being the parashah with the most mitzvot in it – 74 laws, in fact.

“You are what you eat.” Some say a French politician and author named Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin coined a version of the phrase in 1826,

Graham Nash was not, as far as I know, inspired by the Book of Deuteronomy when he wrote this song in 1968. So we’ll consider it just a happ

The walls are crumbling before our very eyes. Walls of denial, walls of defensiveness, walls of deception. The walls are crumbling and we can see – we must see – what is behind them: starvation, suffering, death.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Friday, June 26, 2015. The Supreme Court issued their decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, granting same-sex couples the right to marry in all 50 states.

“Kol ha’olam kulo, gesher tzar m’od. The whole world, all of it, is a very narrow bridge.” Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav, the chasidic master who wrote this teaching over two hundred years ago, captures an unpleasant, if common, human experience.

These words can be found in Mishkan T’filah, the Reform movement’s prayerbook, on page 165, but their true origin is more obscure.

כֹּל עוֹד בַּלֵּבָב פְּנִימָה נֶפֶשׁ יְהוּדִי הוֹמִיָּה. As long as in the heart, within, The soul of a Jew still yearns, And onward, towards the ends of the east, an eye still gazes toward Zion; Our hope is not yet lost, The hope of two thousand years, To be a free people in our land, The land of Zion and Jerusalem. It is a strange choice for a national anthem. The haunting melody, the longing, somber lyrics. No rockets’ red glare or bombs bursting in air, no “ jour de