Posts tagged ‘celebration’

Inside the (Hanukkah) Light

This meditation on light pluses with hope, carrying echoes of Hanukkah. It’s about seeing, feeling, and loving the light shining around us, and our yearning to…

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The Season of Dedication

When the Maccabees finally won back the Temple for the Jewish people, it took eight days to clean and consecrate the holy space. Chanukah derives from…

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Farewell Ushpizot, Ushpizin: Meditation Before Taking Down a Sukkah

Each year, we construct beautiful dwellings for Sukkot. We intentionally create temporary, holy spaces. We invite the presence of honored guests, the ushpizin, seven prophets, patriarchs and kings of…

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Beauty Dances

On Sukkot, joy and beauty arrive. We are called to bring that beauty into the world. This piece appears in This Grateful Heart: Psalms and Prayers for a…

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Looking Back at Our Long Marriage

A simple prayer to be said after years and years of marriage. Here’s a related prayer, a “Blessing for a Spouse / Partner.” And for those…

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I Sing

A prayer about song in honor of the amazing musicians filling the world with new Jewish music. The format — 6x6x3, six lines of six words…

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Sacred Silly

This playful and unexpected prayer/poem makes fun of my own seriousness about writing prayers and liturgy. And I need a break from the intensity of affairs…

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The Gifts of Our Lives

This new prayer of gratitude includes an alphabetical acrostic. Acrostics were a mainstay of Jewish liturgical poems, known as piyutim. This piece combines the acrostic with a four-part…

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Vayakhel-Pekudei: For the Gift of Art

In this week’s double torah portion, Vayakhel-Pekudei, the master artist Bezalel is named to direct the creation of the tabernacle, all of its symbols and tools,…

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Vayetze 5775: Messengers among Us

Is it possible to recognize an angel, a messenger of G-d? How would I know? Angels appear at the beginning and the end of this week’s…

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