High Holiday Workbook

Repentance is good for the soul, and for our activism. Use this workbook—whether you’re Jewish or not—to reflect on this past year and how you can deepen your life in the next one.

Speaking Our Pain: Anguish, Wonder, and Comfort in the Psalms

The psalms, that body of biblical literature so beautiful and passionate, so full of longing, are often rejected by those committed to progressive politics. Here, though, I would like to encourage those of us interested in changing the world and transforming ourselves to turn to them again and take another look.

Ha’Rav Kook: Master of the Lights

A world of chaos stands before us, all the time that we have not yet reached the “tikkun elyon”—the highest level of healing, repairing, transforming—by uniting all life forces and all their diverse tendencies. As long as each one exalts himself, claiming, I am sovereign, I and no other—there cannot be peace in our midst (Notebook 8:429).

Same-Sex Weddings, Hindu Traditions, and Modern India

Same-sex desire and even sexual activity have been represented and discussed in Indian literature for two millennia, often in a nonjudgmental and even celebratory manner, but a new virulent form of modern homophobia developed in India during the colonial period.

Islam and Homosexuality

In 2002 I began a long and lonely journey, daring to visit some of the darkest corners of the taboo that permeates the consciousness of that unlikely character: the gay or lesbian Muslim.

The Future of God — and Secularism

The future of God depends on the future of secularism. Most people will hear in that sentiment a prediction about the growth of secularism: If secularism grows, belief in God will commensurately shrink. If secularism stagnates, the world will continue to believe in God in 2100.

A Universe Struggling to Become Aware?

Without the compassion that arises when we realize our nonduality — empathy not only with other humans but with the planet — it becomes increasingly likely that civilization as we know it will not survive the next few centuries.

God without God

The atheists have all the best arguments. They find the religious world utterly indefensible, both morally and intellectually. Thankfully the God the atheist denies is not the God that people of true faith affirm.