THE BRAVE NEW LAND

Dude catapulted off the top of the fence and ran away last Shabbat... Every time that I see him, wagging his tail and groveling on his back in the street in front of the house, I want to scream at him and, really, I loose myself with it. Buried deep down, I know that he is the cutest when he does that, but I just can’t seem to get the notion out of my head that he is destroying the fence just for ‘me,’ which of course ignites the inner, lurking Hulk that is also buried deep down. This is the problem in my life... Dude the dog. How ridiculous is that? I have been challenged with this test before, especially with my dog Cody in Boulder. He would shred himself trying to get away from lightning. I was constantly fixing fences and, in the end, put metal plates under the wood of the gates. It didn’t help... So, I have to wonder, ‘Why am I being tested with this special issue?’ I mean, am I just not getting something here? On another related topic, this week we are still watching the crisis a...

Every week, as I begin to look deeper into who I am (and what I am supposed to be doing on this amazing inter-dimensional Planet Earth space ship), I often pull out the parsha of the week to derive some inspiration. As is quite often the case, I cannot get any farther in my reading than a few paragraphs before something grabs me with an iron fist and won’t let go. This week, it is Shabbat. In the very first sentence of Vayakhel (the parsha of the week), Moshe says to the Israelites, “On six days, work may be done, but the seventh day shall be holy for you, a day of complete rest for Hashem; whoever does work on it shall be put to death. You shall not kindle fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day.” Then Moshe moves right into building the Mishkan (Tabernacle), as if there is some intrinsic connection between the Sabbath day and building the Mishkan… Hmmm, I wonder…. Well, we know that Moshe was speaking to the Israelites (the Jews) and not to the nations of the world when he w...

Last week on Shabbat I was sick. I had already been sick for a few days before and took some time on Shabbat to recuperate a bit. I slept in, prayed at home, and even tried to read the newspaper. While reading all about Egypt and how Facebook and social media in general was considered the spark point of unrest (or some such holier-than-thou ‘Social Media’ is the new deal nonsense), I stumbled across a really interesting article about an art and design exhibition that was exploring how a new generation of creative thinkers from around the world, having grown up in a globalized context, were looking at the world from a fundamentally different place then the rest of us old-timers that remember when it was a really anticipated event for movies (you know, from the movie theaters) to play on our TVs. These kids always had instant messaging, the internet, and anytime-anyplace access to movies, music, and online reading of any kind, just about anywhere in the world. The exhibition was positing...

Did you ever wonder whether or not there was an intrinsic interconnection between everything in the perceived universe, like ripples in a pond rolling out across the surface of existence that cause everything and everyone to bob and roll in time with them? We keep hearing about how we need to ‘go green’ for instance. ‘Our environment can’t take much more of this abuse,’ the scientists tell us. The politicians also seem to be getting on board with this agenda, if only to collect votes in the upcoming election, but this is a good thing, right? I guess that when I really think about how much impact I have on the world, I can’t get away from the idea that, no matter how much I try, I will always be leaving my boot prints strafed across the landscape in my wake. It all seems to be a matter of how fast I run, while attempting to put distance between my footsteps and me. The problem is that the faster I go, the more dirt flies, so I start to invent ways to preventively cover them up. I pass r...

Now that jetlag is waning and I have begun to settle in to my life back in Israel, I am reminded of the idea that it is hard to live while perched, bracing into the Ruach (Hebrew for wind and for spirit) on the spiritual highland of the physical world. I often feel like there is a giant magnifying glass poised above Eretz Israel (The Land of Israel), causing the molecules that imbue us all to vibrate and bounce off of each other at a much higher rate than is normal elsewhere on our Planet Earth spaceship. Just the way that Israelis are capable of multitasking (however annoying it can be to wait in line while the clerk is answering 3 questions, typing on the keyboard, and talking on a cell phone, all at the same time) is evidence of this idea. Virtually as soon as I got off the plane, I was bombarded by action and reaction of social, political, religious, and spiritual natures. An acquaintance of mine is being torn down by the press and by others as well, the international terrorist org...