Persona non gratitude
Credit: Shadow Sculpture by Tim Noble and Sue Webster Many years ago I met a Mom from Colorado Springs who donated the heart of her young son as a life-saving transplant . Typically, the donor family does not know who receives the organ, but in this case, the recipient of her son’s heart was a […]
They Came For
Where do we want society to move towards? Mayor of Pittsburgh Bill Peduto provided this answer following the mass murder of 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue this past Saturday morning: “It is not about finding ways to divide us, it is about finding ways that unite us through our commonalities as humans. […]
Welcoming Melanie
Dear KE Community: I can think of no better way than to introduce our newest teacher than presenting her in her own words. I have had the pleasure of studying with and mentoring her and learning from her courage and openness. with admiration, David In Kabbalah this semester, we are studying “Masks”. What masks do […]
Dear Dr. Ford
Dear Dr. Ford: I would like to recommend to you a recently published book, The Choice, by Dr. Edith Eger. Dr. Eger, a psychologist who has worked with victims of trauma, details her own process of healing from the brutal, dehumanizing experience she suffered as a young adolescent in Auschwitz and in two Nazi labor […]
You Killed My Father: Prepare to Learn
Yesterday, a student sent her class a story she read about a young man, a football star who was adopted as an infant and his search for his biologic family. It turned out that his biologic father, who had not known that he had a son (the mother did not inform him she was pregnant) […]
No-thingness is Something Else
I search and I scan for the perfect metaphor Abhorring imprecision or worse selling out To the exigencies of a concocted cocktail A ballerina poising on a sharpened pinkie The tone of skin, voice or deafness. What can one say of no-thingness Without being led into a perjury trap Ayin or Ayn (in Hebrew) mean […]
The Postman Rings Twice
What does the electrician who is now a spiritual teacher and the postal worker who now interprets dreams share in common? Typically, we see metaphor as beyond the concrete and literal—traversing imaginative realms of our symbolic experience. The Kabbalah takes a hybrid position. If we were using a metaphor to explain the Kabbalah’s take on […]
Addressing Your Masks
God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. The Book of Genesis starts off with a bang and ends with some dust. In between it is one masquerade after another. The ball gets rolling from the beginning —energy slows down to parade as matter. Then comes the Eden story in which human […]
Melting ICE
The United States remains one of only a handful of countries to retain the Fahrenheit temperature system and therefore, we are aware that ice begins to melt as it reaches and moves beyond 32 degrees. How Daniel Fahrenheit’s system places water’s freezing (and melting) temperature at 32 degrees is a complicated story. The number 32, […]
“How to Win the Fight Against Fear” Guest Blog by KE Teacher, Rabbi Jamie Arnold
The principal of a local high school calls me up. “Hey rabbi, we had another anti-Semitic incident at our school. I’ve spoken to the student and his parents, but I’d like him to meet with you.” “Of course,” I said. A few days later, this burly seventeen year-old steps though the doors of the synagogue […]