Letting go of self-centered and anthropocentric thinking—“we are the only images of God”—will help us reconnect to our authentic mystical roots as lovers of all beings.
2015
A Bodhisattva’s Approach to Climate Activism
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Bodhisattvas commit daily to an impossible task: the liberation of all living beings. What can climate activists learn from their active nonattachment?
Rethinking Religion
A God That Could Be Real
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Unconscious evolution of God-ideas is inevitable, but conscious evolution of God-ideas has been harshly discouraged. This must change, or else we’ll never be able to bring our best knowledge into the process of rethinking God for our time.
Articles
Growing Toward God: Jewish Movement through an Axial Age
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Just as plants are heliotropic beings that grow toward the sun, we humans are theotropic beings that grow toward God. And just as a tree doesn’t have to understand the sun to feel it and be fed by it, we don’t have to understand God to be nourished by subtle sacred influences.
Articles
Jewish Education During the Nazis as Spiritual Resistance
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“Somehow Nazism and Martin Buber worked together to give a lot of us a much deeper feeling for what Judaism offers.”
2014
Made by God, Broken by Life: Developing an African American Hermeneutic for Disability
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I believe it’s time to develop an African American hermeneutic for approaching disability language and metaphors of brokenness in religious discourse.
2014
High Holy Days in the Hospital
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“On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed. Who shall live and who shall die, who shall perish by fire and who by water, who by Roman soldier and who by cancer…”
“No, that’s not how it goes,” I wearily chided myself from my hospital bed. I knew I was making up my own words. But alone in the wee hours of the morning, as the High Holidays approached, that was the best rendition of the Unetanah Tokef (the central prayer of the High Holiday service) that I could muster. And my brother Jeffrey later told me that spending the eve of Yom Kippur with me in the hospital was the most meaningful Yom Kippur of his life.
2014
Illness and Innocence
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Why do many of us feel guilty when we catch a cold or grow a tumor? Is it because so many religions depict illness as divine punishment?
2014
Who Can Be Commanded?: Disability in Jewish Thought and Culture
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Recently two dear friends asked me to advise them about their pregnant daughter, who just discovered that her fetus has Noonan syndrome, a genetic condition that can result in heart defects, unusual facial features, short stature, and learning problems. The pregnant daughter wanted to keep the child, but her husband was afraid that the child would have a difficult life and was concerned about possible consequences for the rest of the family. My friends presented the possibility of abortion in this case as a Jewish legal question. May a person, they asked, decide over life and death? What is our responsibility to act on this, and where are the limits? My reply:
Though such children have a difficult path to follow, yet it is a life with many possibilities for fulfilment.
2014
No Casseroles for Schizophrenics: The Church and Mental Illness
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One important lesson we must all learn, Christian or otherwise, is that the patient is not the illness. Symptoms of the illness are not the patient’s fault nor are they signs of a sick soul.
2014
Both Wilderness and Promised Land: How Torah Grows When Read Through LGBTQ Eyes
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B’reishit—in the beginning of the Torah, and the beginning of the world—there was God, a very queer God. Unlike other deities described in Iron Age texts, this God didn’t have a form or face or identifiable role in the natural world. In other Iron Age creation stories, deities are action heroes, creating order out of chaos by slaying monsters, other deities, and occasionally their parents. In Genesis, God brings order out of chaos simply by speaking. No blood, no pantheon, no rivals, no triumphs to portray on temple walls, nothing to visualize or imagine.
2014
Inspired by Moses: Disability and Inclusion in the Jewish Community
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I believe that Jewish communities must stop creating “special” programs that serve people with disabilities in segregated settings and instead support personalized efforts to enable people with disabilities to live full and meaningful Jewish lives of their own choosing.
2014
Dear Jael, Wife of Heber the Kenite
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The Torah anesthetized me long ago. Back before I could drink wine, it broke my heart to read Leviticus. “No man who has any defect may come near.” I am twice expelled.
2014
When Strangers Read My Body: Blurred Boundaries and the Search for Something Spiritual
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The encounter was not all that different from others I’ve had on the street—a rupture in my peace of mind. It was well past midnight, and I walked the streets alone, delighted to bask in the warmth of a productive day. A figure came into focus, dressed in colors dark as the night. At first the stranger’s words were muted by the music blaring through my headphones—my temporary barrier against the many interlocutors who feel entitled to interaction once they notice my limp. This visibility is something I cannot hide, and I don’t attempt to do so.
2014
God on Wheels: Disability and Jewish Feminist Theology
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At kiddush one day, I was welcoming a visitor to synagogue when she popped the question. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked as her eyes flicked from my face to my wheels. I’ve been asked this question in an astounding array of inappropriate venues; I didn’t flinch. “I have a disability,” I said, though it was plain she’d already noticed. A firm full stop followed that statement, though I knew full well I didn’t answer her question.