At the Gravesite

Had I become an academic only to disprove the myth that Jews are only interested in making money, or to confirm the stereotype that Jews are smart? Or did I honestly hope to influence the younger generation?

The Spiritual Truth of JFK (As Movie and Reality)

To put the Kennedy assassination in a historical perspective that is both spiritual and political, we here reprint Peter Gabel’s brilliant article on the subject, “The Spiritual Truth of JFK (As Movie and Reality),” originally published in Tikkun in March/April 1992 in response to the original release of Stone’s film.

The Lady in Bonesweep

The longer she read, the longer the effect seemed to last. One lamp. One bed. One smooth flat sky-blue pillow beneath her head. Inside a single cage of ribs, her heart stood still.

Misty

A teacher is not one person. A teacher is the many voices he speaks and the quicksilver changes among them: the things he says to administrators and the things he says to parents; the things he says to ninth graders and the very different things he says to juniors; the farce and praise and kowtowing and congratulation, all those necessary notes across the register of human speech. We are whatever we are saying.

Sleeping in the Dust at Burning Man

If “sabbath, sunshine, and sexual intercourse” offer a foretaste of the world-that-is-coming, as the Talmud suggests, then could the Burning Man festival be understood as a taste of this messianic future?

A Psychoanalytic Guide to Kabbalah

Psychoanalysis and Kabbalah have a lot in common, not the least their ability to profoundly alter our mind-states and influence our actions. In his modern Guide for the Perplexed, renowned psychologist Michael Eigen breaks down the connections between psychoanalysis and Kabbalah, and how they might be used together for our benefit.

Being the Love You Seek by Kenneth L. Meyer

A Poem by Spiritual Progressive Kenneth L. Meyer

www.drkenmeyer.com

A personal reflection on life’s purpose:
 

To cultivate the courage and willingness

necessary to live fully,

embodied in our fragile human form,

to be fully forgiven and forgiving,

non-defensive and open hearted,

and reciprocally empathic in relation to all that is. This is the ordinariness of a divine dimension

from which we all emerge. The very love we were born to express as humans,

from within and without,

from bones to heart to spirit,

and as soul to soul,

journeying and returning to and fro,

from earth dust to stardust

— all seeming to occur in a lived space-time

of a perceived universe. There is no real time or absolute space. There is only Love.

Therapist from the Depths: A Conversation with Michael Eigen

Michael Eigen isn’t only one of the leading and most important psychoanalysts in the world, but also a poet of strong-expression who plays the piano, wanders in the forest, and seeks holiness through Chasidic studies and Kabbalah. I had a conversation with Eigen, the Jewish kid who became one of Wilfred Bion’s greatest students (“thanks to him I decided to get married”), on the occasion of the publishing of his book Kabbalah and Psychoanalysis. At that time he told me:
When I was a little boy I remember seeing a tree. Half of it was withered and dead and the other half was blooming. Then I realized that one could be dead and very much alive, concurrently. We are not monolithic, and can experience vitality and life on certain levels and on others total deadness.