Category: Dvar Torah

When We Assume... (P. Nitzavim-Vayeilekh)

8/30/2026

In just a matter of days, Jews here and around the world will gather in groups large and small – connected across distance but close in heart – to bring in a new year and a next turning of soul.

Always, but especially when times are tough, we stand together. It's an especially fitting time to consider to how we see each other – and try to remember how often we get it wrong.

Later Life Superpower: From Hindsight to Foresight (P. Ki Tavo)

8/23/2026

We usually imagine that our experience of time is steady and linear – but it's not always so.

Extraordinary moments seem to slow or even freeze in our awareness. As life progresses, we all collect those moments in the hindsight of our mind's eye. They live on as hyper-real memory.

It is precisely our hindsight – richly layered by life experience – that gives elapsed time its meaning.

Spiritual life invites us to inhabit wise hindsight, then pivot our adult wisdom into foresight.

Three Traps for the Justice Unweary (P. Shoftim)

8/9/2026

The holy preparatory month of Elul begins. The inner shofar begins to sound, calling us ever more to inner attention. Rosh Hashanah will follow so very soon.

So it's precisely now that Torah echoes the shofar call with a resounding bellow through the ages: "Justice, justice shall you pursue."

The path beckons us, with three traps to avoid.

The Mitzvah of Crossing Our Inner Jordan (P. Re'eh)

8/2/2026

We haven't yet reached our destination. We still act like travelers battling traffic, anxiety, regrets, cruelty, endless customer-service hold times, and whatever else we carry within.

We'll be our best when we reach our destination, we tell ourselves. But what are we waiting for? Isn't the destination we await already within?

About the Blocked Heart (P. Eikev)

7/26/2026

Living with a fully open heart all the time can be uncomfortable – even risky. Anyone reading this probably knows this truth from life experience.

Most humans learn to protect their hearts. We learn so well that the feeling of a closed heart can be instinctive, automatic, effortless. We can become so inured that we might not know just how closed our hearts have become.

Maybe that's why, precisely now in the Jewish year, Torah calls us to open our hearts wide.

Gently Grasping Spirit (P. Vaethanan)

7/19/2026

Perhaps you've experienced the "beach wisdom" that the tighter we grasp dry sand in our hand, the more likely the sand will fall through our fingers. The way to hold sand is to cup it gently.

Lots of things work that way. (For instance, wise parents know that about their adult children.)

It's not exactly the same with what we call holy – the sacred, spirit, God – but it's close.

The Empowering Distortion Mirror of Memory (P. Devarim)

7/12/2026

Whatever our age, character and inclinations, we can't help but inhabit our memory. All that we have experienced in life shapes us through the lens of what we remember of our past experience, ourselves and other people.

And whatever our age, character and inclinations, memory has a hidden way of reflecting ourselves back at us. This truth becomes especially important as the introspective Season of Meaning approaches.

Our Cities of Refuge (P. Matot-Masei)

7/5/2026

It's summer travel season, which aligns with the approaching spiritual season nine weeks ahead.

Wonderful as travel can be, travelers can tire from traveling – the need to get somewhere, the hurry up and wait, the grip of the wheel. Travelers get bumped and bruised, hot and bothered.

We all are travelers – whether vacationers or journeyers on the road of life. We all need refuge from things that go sideways on our way.

Maybe to our surprise, this refuge isn't a rest stop, or community – but something else entirely.

(Don't) Sound the Alarm (P. Pinhas)

6/28/2026

This week marks 10 weeks until Rosh Hashanah. Torah, always uncannily on time, reminds us this week about Rosh Hashanah and the shofar.

For a practice so symbolic, so core, so cellular in resonance and impact, it's odd that Torah does not tell us why we connect Rosh Hashanah with shofar. And Torah also left it to tradition, 2,000 years ago, to not blow shofar on Shabbat.

Why? The answers have to do with alarms.

When We Lose It (P. Hukkat-Balak)

6/21/2026

Just about all humans have the propensity to lose it. Something gets our goat. Something rubs us wrong. Something deep inside ferments and bubbles over. A slow burn suddenly flames out.

When we judge harshly, or lose our temper, or lash out, it can seem like we are responding first and foremost to whatever "something" has our immediate attention – whatever offense, real or imagined, might provoke us in the moment.

In those moments, however, the emotional and spiritual reality can be hidden from us – unless we seek it with all our integrity and courage.

<<Previous

When We Assume... (P. Nitzavim-Vayeilekh)

Later Life Superpower: From Hindsight to Foresight (P. Ki Tavo)

Three Traps for the Justice Unweary (P. Shoftim)

The Mitzvah of Crossing Our Inner Jordan (P. Re'eh)

About the Blocked Heart (P. Eikev)

Gently Grasping Spirit (P. Vaethanan)

The Empowering Distortion Mirror of Memory (P. Devarim)

Our Cities of Refuge (P. Matot-Masei)

(Don't) Sound the Alarm (P. Pinhas)

When We Lose It (P. Hukkat-Balak)

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