by Rabbi Misha

Impermanence and Gratitude

by Rabbi Misha

It was wonderful to spend these last ten days with you all.

by Rabbi Misha

Here I Am! (Who's I again?)

by Rabbi Misha

The last shabbat of the year gives us an opportunity to imagine the goodness we invite in the new year.

by Rabbi Misha

Are you sick of yourself?

by Rabbi Misha

Like a switch that’s been clicked, the season of opening windows has arrived in New York. The heat isn’t bouncing off the sidewalks, the AC is relaxing, the sweet disruption of summer abates.

by Rabbi Misha

It’s all about food at the end of the day. All the big concepts, the word of God, four thousand years of history, Holocausts and survival, all of it boils down to what we eat or don’t eat.

by Rabbi Misha

In 1951, the iconic composer John Cage famously visited the anechoic chamber at Harvard University.

by Rabbi Misha

The last weeks of summer are a primordial state of mind. Summer has happened. The year is over, but the next one has yet to begin. We yawn our way through the yawn-like days waiting to be reborn, thrown back into the world.

by Rabbi Misha

The rabbis in the Talmud are big on accountability. But I'm not sure how they would feel about some of our current societal methods of holding people accountable for their actions.

by Rabbi Misha

On the night of the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av some decades ago, my parents made their way through the streets of west Jerusalem, entered through the walls of the old city and walked down to the Western Wall.

by Rabbi Misha

You’re coming home from work or from running around town. Your mind is busy. Your heart full of concerns. You unlock the door to your apartment and are about to step in. Your eye catches sight of the Mezuzah on the doorpost. You remember the first word in the scroll inside of it: Shma, Listen!

by Rabbi Misha

One thing Covid didn’t cure me of, is my continuing obsession with Psalm 27. In the Kabbalistic poem Yedid Nefesh, which we often sing to welcome Shabbat, there’s talk of a love-sickness that reminds me of this poetic obsession:

by Rabbi Misha

Last week I laid out some thoughts about how our poets of old pointed us toward a quiet that can transcend even the most difficult moments. At the heart of these is Psalm 27, attributed to King David. Here are two very different renditions of the Psalm, along with the original Hebrew text. The first version stays very close to the Hebrew, and the second is not quite a translation, more an expression of what I see as the main idea behind the Psalm, using elements from many different lines in the text.

by Rabbi Misha

Imagine you had the ability to put the world on mute.

by Rabbi Misha

Last week was the last class of the year at the School for Creative Judaism, the New Shul’s Hebrew school partner. Each year we have an annual theme, and this year’s was the Year of the Peacemakers, wherein students learned about activists for peace and justice from all stages of Jewish history.

by Rabbi Misha

A conversion candidate asked me recently what to expect as a Black Jew in New York City. What, he implied, is the current state of the racism and exoticizing of African American Jews in Jewish America?

by Rabbi Misha

On Rosh Hashanah we say that the Earth is תלוי על בלימה, a poetic phrase meaning something like hanging on nothingness, suspended in air, sitting on a void. The first word, תלוי means hanging or dependent.

by Rabbi Misha

I wake up from an intense dream. I go over its details in my mind. I’m full of the ramifications of this dream: psychological, emotional, spiritual. I turn to a loved one or friend and begin describing it. Their attention fades quickly.

by Rabbi Misha

The question is how do we respond to such a devastating week? One answer is: with a bell. (If you have one nearby grab it, it might come in handy.)