Jewish Institute for Lifelong Learning & Innovation

Every so often someone tells me that they do not go to services because they do not believe the words that are written in the siddur (prayer book). Here is a secret I will confess:

I used to think that if I understood the language that another person spoke, I understood what the person was saying. This is simply not true. When we talk to each other, we have a set of suppositions based on our own experiences that we impose on the conversation.

This past Tuesday was “Giving Tuesday.” I am certain that you were inundated with requests for donations—from places that you have supported in the past, from organizations that you believe in, from institutions that offer help to people throughout the world.

I have spent the whole day making fig jam. During the summer I cleaned and froze the figs I wrenched from the birds that live in my neighborhood.

So much of Judaism centers on the root z-ch-r, the Hebrew root for memory. We proclaim, as we chant the words of the kiddush (blessing of sanctification) every shabbat that what we do (or don’t do) on this day is Zecher l’ma’asse v’reshit, in memory of God’s work to make Creation possible.

There are a few things I am certain about in my life. I am certain of the love and of the gratitude I feel for my family, for my friends, for my students, and for my fellow travelers in this Jilli’s journey.

In April of this year there was a cartoon in The New Yorker that portraited four humans carrying big stone blocks on their backs and three robots with whips on their hands ready to whip the humans. The caption said: “to think this all began with letting autocomplete finish our…

The first ten days of the Hebrew month Tishrei are called (in Hebrew) Yamim Norayim. Most Jews call this period “the High Holidays,” but this name does not mean much to me. Yamim means days, and Norayim can be translated as awe, reverence, or fear. Translation is always an interpretation,…

A few weeks ago the actor Jamie Foxx wrote the following Instagram post:  “They killed this dude name Jesus… What do you think they’ll do to you? #fake friends #fake love”