After a life of straying from the spiritual background of his childhood, David Baker finds himself wandering back into questions and mystery.
Judaism
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For Shabbat Shirah — the Sabbath of Song — a reflection on collective song as an intimate, embodied expression of the soul in sorrow, celebration, and resistance.
A photo-poem for Sukkot in celebration of shelter and wandering, harvest and shared meals.
There are gems at the heart of all our faith traditions. Omid Safi on the challenge ahead to polish away the impurities of hatred and greed that keep the light from shining.
There’s no such thing as finding belonging too late. In mid-life, a writer delves into the stories and traditions of her Jewish heritage, and discovers a sense of kinship more extensive and profound than any she’d experienced before.
Mortality is real for all of us, regardless of whether we believe in fate. Marty Kaplan contemplates the hubris of making plans in a universe of improv.
To be part of any family is to bear witness to its joy, as well as its dysfunction. For Rosh Hashanah, Sharon Brous explores the intimate link between family healing and social responsibility at the heart of Jewish faith.
Our lives and our liberations are bound up in each other. A photo-poem exploration of hope, freedom, and the meaning of exodus.
The importance of religion to Americans is trending downward. Meanwhile, more people are saying they experience a deep sense of wonder and awe about the universe. A secular Jew on the importance of the Passover, ritual of Seder, and the paradise of kinship.
A secular Jewish man takes umbrage when his close Christian friend says he believes he will go to hell. After he returns to his religious tradition, he says, he understands these inner and outer tensions as essential to faith — even if they disagree with his personal wishes.
We often talk about breaking bread around the dinner table, but what about baking bread in community. A young woman shares her encounter with making challah, reconnecting to tradition through intimacy, and reimagining ritual in a secular age.
Unexpected relationships can lead to deep and lasting learning and growth.
After a son discovers his father's box of Chassidic folktales, he reflects on his upbringing, the enduring importance of tradition being passed down for generations, and the legacy he must carry forward (in translation).
Many people may only attend services on special holidays or days of sacred obligation. Jane Gross, a single New Yorker now in her 60s, relays her own story of trying to reconnect with community for the Days of Awe and finding new comfort in her solitude on Yom Kippur.
For the Jewish High Holy Days, two poems by Esther Cohen paired with photography from Matthew Septimus. They offer words that sound like music, and postcards that become visual prayers and emblems of hope.
What unites us all is that we all have mothers. A poet traces the path of her life through her Rumanian grandmother and the women who followed.
"Ritual does for behavior what poetry does for words." When the hope of youthful enthusiasm turns grim and gray and the spiritual challenge of uncertainty beckons, a rabbi finds hope in ritual as poetry in action, recognizing the spirituality in the routine, recapturing the sacred in the mundane, and rediscovering beauty in the ordinary.
What do we mean when we use the word freedom? Matthew Septimus and Esther Cohen celebrate the many Haggadah possibilities with a poem and a picture.
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