All Posts

God told a seventy-five-year-old man with no children to leave everything and go. He went. The name he arrived with wasn't the one he left with.

The rabbis can't agree whether Noah was great or just adequate. Five months into being Jewish, that question reads differently than you'd expect.

The Torah doesn't begin with paradise. It begins with chaos. The distance between tohu vavohu and tov me'od is six days of work — and then rest.

Moses asked to see God's face. God said: you'll see My back. You recognize the goodness after it passes. This Sukkot, it passed.

Moses asks his last words to land like rain on young grass. After Yom Kippur, seventy students in a Michigan parking lot showed him they did.

Moses spent his last day walking toward the people, not away. My husband spent Rosh Hashanah baking twenty-four loaves of challah. All of them left the house.

Moses looked at a people who'd survived ninety-eight curses and said: you are still standing. The week before Rosh Hashanah, that's enough.

The Torah commands joy — but only after you've named the suffering. Ki Tavo says bring what you have, recite where you've been, and then rejoice.

Ki Teitzei packs seventy-four commandments into one parsha. Most of them are tiny. All of them assume you left the house this morning.

The Torah sends soldiers home from war — not for weakness, but for unfinished lives. A house not dedicated. A vineyard not harvested. A love not begun.

The Torah says "open your hand" and "spend it on whatever you want" in the same parsha. Re'eh doesn't make you choose between generosity and joy.

The Torah commands a blessing for after you eat — when you're full and most likely to forget. The small commandments almost seem to bear the most weight.

In an Athens burger shop, we found rubber ducks left by someone who wanted to support them after they were attacked for being Jewish. The Torah says: recite these words when you are away.

Moses said "how" because the people were too alive to carry alone. Jeremiah said "how" because they were gone. Same word. Both true.

We drove the group to the airport, returned the rental car, and got on a train to Jerusalem. Some journeys end when you leave. Some end when you decide to stay.

In every Torah scroll, the word "peace" in Pinchas is written with a broken letter. A sculptor near Gaza makes roses from rockets. The crack is the point.

A prophet hired to curse Israel looked down from a mountain and saw tents arranged with care. He couldn't do it. That's also what a living room full of rubber ducks looks like.

Miriam carried the well for forty years and nobody noticed until she was gone. The Song of the Well is what happens when you dig with your own hands.

A dead stick left overnight produces almonds by morning. After the Torah's worst fracture, the answer isn't argument — it's showing up first.

Twelve scouts saw the same land. Ten saw giants. Two saw grapes. The difference wasn't what they found — it was how they looked.