"We asked them 'what does it look like on a video camera?'"

"I now give to you: “Rachel’s winning strategy for the 2048 game” also known as “7 things to remember when saying ‘I’m Sorry.’"

"Between  two of the hardest moments of Abraham’s fatherhood, the exile of his elder son, Ishmael, and the near-sacrifice his younger son, Isaac, Abraham looks past his doubts, past his grief, past his pain, and answers hineni."

"We can see Pi in the world, and we can sense God in our lives, and our faith can allow us to do as Moses did, by letting us stop attempting to understand the metaphor and simply let God, and Pi, exist."

Lesson Plans

METAPHORS FOR GOD

For 6th and 7th graders

Big Ideas: The Jewish belief system in multifaceted (complex) and dynamic (constantly changing)

Knowing: Learners will recognize and interact with some of the many ways in which Judaism speaks about God.

Doing: Through learning about different ways in which we conceive of God, learners will feel empowered to articulate, share, and revisit their own questions and notions of the Divine.

Believing: Through familiarizing themselves with a range of depictions of the Divine, learners will feel better equipped and more comfortable to forge or strengthen their own beliefs about God and how/why the world works.

Belonging: Students will offer their own conceptions of God and in doing so, create a class-Torah in which they share their own God-ideas. 

Jethro & Moses: An inter-faith duo raising Jews

For adult learners

Today, our communities are more heterogeneous than ever. They are filled with people and families of different ethnicities, sexualities, backgrounds and traditions. Furthermore, we are seeing a heightened level of heterogeneity in nuclear and extended family units. This learning session is designed to get interfaith child-rearing partners – whether they are co-parents, parents and grandparents, legal guardians or friend and relatives – to explore the complexities of that relationship. Both Jewish and non-Jewish learners are expected to be invested in the child-rearing process, but not necessarily Jewishly literate.

Enduring Understanding: Both non-Jewish and Jewish child-rearing partners (“parents”) share an equal role and responsibility in raising Jewish children.

Core Concept: The Midrashic relationship between Moses and Jethro can serve as an example for interfaith parenting.

Essential Questions: What does my faith tradition have to offer Jewish children? How does my interfaith relationship benefit my Jewish child’s rearing? What worries me about the influence of my interfaith relationship on my child’s religious identity?

Know – Learners will know their partners’ fears about raising a child in an interfaith relationship.

Do – Learners will engage with Jewish texts as a way to explore real life situations.

Believe – Learners will believe that both Jews and non-Jews have important things to offer their children.

Belong – Learners will connect with other interfaith co-parenting couples and form a community around that shared experience.

I know that there are Jews in Science, but is there Science in Judaism: Connecting the Jewish and Scientific Processes

For High School and College students

Enduring Understanding: I do not need to choose between living in the modern world and a Jewish world.

Core Concept: I can use my modern skill sets to discover my own Jewish lifestyle.

Essential Questions: What are some skills that I believe only work in the modern world? How do I make Jewish decisions that feel authentic? How do I balance my place in an ancient tradition with my place in the modern world?

Know – Learners will know that their modern skill sets and Jewish choices can be in harmony.

Do – Learners will practice making Jewish choices with their modern skills.

Believe – Learners will believe that their Jewish choices have an impact on their secular lives.

Belong – Learners will feel like their personal Judaism has a place in the modern world.

The Bible Uncensored: Stories No One Taught You: Do The Ends Really Justify The Means? (Judah & Tamar)

For Learners in their 20s and 30s

Enduring Understandings of Full Class Series: It is possible to find meaning in studying challenging biblical texts. Regardless of perceived morality, choices often have unseen motivations and consequences.

Core Concept of This Class: When Tamar chooses to deceive Judah and sleep with him, she exemplifies the complicated nature of social status in the Bible.

Essential Questions: Who was “right,” Tamar or Judah? What was Tamar risking by seducing Judah? What was Tamar risking if she didn’t seduce Judah? How does Tamar’s action affect the unfolding of the Jewish narrative?

Know – Learners will know Tamar’s justification for her acts, and their biblical legal foundation.

Do – Learners will study the intellectual and emotional challenges presented by difficult biblical texts.

Believe – Learners will challenge their beliefs regarding the simplicity of biblical texts and the polar nature of right and wrong.

Belong – Learners will engage in a candid and high-level discussion and textual-discovery with their peers.

Tefila Intentions

What is Prayer?

This past weekend I had the rare opportunity to talk with my brother, face-to-face. And in the middle of a conversation, he turns to me, and asks “What is prayer?” I was too overwhelmed in the moment to respond coherently. Too many answers popped into my head. Prayer is a shout, and at the same time it’s a whisper. Prayer is a question, and also an answer. Prayer is written in the prayer book, but it’s also spontaneous. Prayer is solemn, and joyful, and sad and awed. And it’s all of these things, all at the same time.

Last weekend, the only thing I could say to my brother was “Honestly, sometimes I have no idea what prayer is. But I know it when I feel it.”

It can be hard for us, in our modern and bustling lives to notice prayer, or to take time to pray at all. We get so wrapped up in the “to-dos” that we all too often ignore the “should-dos.”

But here, in our little community, in the middle of all the craziness that exists outside of these walls, the rhythm of our lives allows us the opportunity to focus, and to take time for prayer.

So, for the next little while, I invite you to use every atom of your heart, any decibel of your voice, any twitch of your muscles to fill this space with prayer. And perhaps, you too, will know it when you feel it.

God's House

When I built my house, I built it from scratch. I put every piece into place myself. I planted the garden, tended to it and watered it. I made sure every leaf, petal and stem grew.

I painted the walls, chose every color of every mural and every statue. I put up stone walls and wooden structures. I made sure every wavelength of light was reflected on the multitude of surfaces.

I built my house from scratch, and now I welcome you into it. I offer you a refreshing drink of spring water. I open the window so that you may sit near this cool breeze. Take comfort and joy in the house I have built, for I built it just for you.

I built it so that in every hall and corner you may discover something new. To see with new wonderment everywhere you turn. I built it to provide for every piece of you life, so that you may work but, I pray, never lack. I built it with puzzles, that you can take apart and reconfigure, so that you too, may build my house.

Because, when I built my house, I built to from scratch. And I did it all alone. But when I built my house, I built it for you, so that you might build our house too.

Lashon Ha'Ra

If you’re like me, you don’t clean until you can see the mess. You wait until there’s sauce on the stove, tumbleweeds of dust in the corner or dried toothpaste on the sink. Then, and only then, do you start your cleaning ritual. But now that it’s Nisan, cleaning takes on a whole ‘nother meaning. We find a feather and candle, or if you’re a little more modern – a Swiffer and vacuum, and go through our entire house looking for crumbs.

It seems appropriate, then, that this week’s parsha is Metzora, in which a homeowner finds that his home is not as clean as it’s supposed to be: there’s tza’ra’at, flecks of disease WITHIN the walls of the house. When this happens the homeowner must empty his house of everything and call in the priest who will either declare the house habitable or condemn it and order its destruction.

The rabbis wonder, what could possibly be this homeowner’s sin that its repercussion is so insidious, so contagious, so infectious, that it permeates his life to a point that necessitates such an extreme response?

Their answer? Lashon Ha’ra.

It’s possible this homeowner didn’t see the slow build up that his actions caused – a speck of gossip here, a dash of hearsay there – until the crumbs of his sins morphed into stains on his house, and it was too late. Now the homeowner must decide whether to stand back and watch his home fall apart, or if his tza’ra’at can be cleansed and cured.

So, when we’re going through your house looking for every particle of chametz, perhaps it’s also a good time to clean our spiritual house, to take stock of the nearly invisible pieces of lashon ha’ra we may have left lying around and clean them up before they become an unavoidable plague.

Modern Midrash Art Project

For my modern Midrash class we were instructed to select one art form and concentrate upon using it to portray, extend and embellish a biblical event, the spiritual journey of a biblical character, or a given key word or theme. I knew I wanted to do some sort of digital project. A basic google search for inspiration led me to a word cloud site, similar to my project but just in a blob instead of a meaningful picture. At first, I tried this with the whole text of the Torah, and chose Mechon Mamre just because it was easiest to cut and paste. I paired this with a google image search of “Moses." When I saw the end result I wondered how/if the words would change based on the text and went through the same process with Joshua, Judges, Samuel, etc.

This project allows viewers to ask questions about a million different texts and their statistical analyzers. A person could recreate it by focusing on  parshiyot or chapters, breaking up the texts into their different authors (like JPDE or Isaiah and Dutereo-Isaiah) and so many different possibilities.

Click here to see more examples of my Modern Midrash Art in the image gallery.