The Last Passover
“I have earnestly desired to eat this Pesach meal with you before I suffer.†Tonight begins the first night of Passover, of Pesach, the Jewish holiday of remembrance and living-out the Israelite escape from Egypt. It is a holiday of questions, of upheaval, of chaos, of suffering and deliverance. And for Christians, also the beginning […]
The Very First Wife Swap
(This is part 3 in my series on 1 Corinthians 5. Click here to read from the beginning.) Most of us probably imagine the first swingers as 1960’s hippies in a free-love commune. But in fact, it started earlier than that, in World War II. Christopher Ryan explains: It seems that the original modern American swingers were […]
A Little Truth Would Go a Long Way
(This is part 2 in my series on 1 Corinthians 5. Click here to read from the beginning.) One marvels at the repetition of intentionally tragic stories, like Evergreene’s: After her Christian marriage ended in divorce, and after she slogged through the concomitant depression, she decided she’d be happier living a bisexual, polyamorous lifestyle. She hid her […]
Removing the Leaven from Passover
The Passover stuff is already out at the grocery store. At the other end of the store, an even greater selection of pastel-colored candy and related items. But Pesach is still several weeks away, and first I have another bat mitzvah to think of. My Beloved will finally herself be called to the Torah in […]
The Curious Story of Tamar
Matthew begins his gospel by breaking the rules. It’s not so much that he includes a boring genealogy that breaks the rules—although from a storytelling perspective, starting with a boring genealogy certainly breaks the storytelling rules. To the ancient Jews, genealogies were very important, and they pop up throughout the Bible. Rather, it’s the way […]
Listening to the Siddur Project CD
Recently, my friend and fellow creator Julie Lavender released her music CD The Siddur Project. Julie hosts the syndicated Dreamfarm Café radio show, which features area musicians: an “experience of eclectic jazz,” says the show’s website, “an intimate window into the very heart of an artist’s creative process.” But Julie also writes and performs her […]
The Love of Money
Contentment makes poor men rich. Discontent makes rich men poor. Supposedly, Benjamin Franklin said that. I was unable, in my brief research, to confirm that these are actually the words of Benjamin Franklin. But it’s a good thought nonetheless. I’ve written about this idea before, from a slightly different perspective, that our happiness is not […]
The Bridge over the Chasm
The metaphors we use affects how we think of things. And how we think of things betrays the metaphors hidden in the reaches of our minds. Being part of a Messianic Jewish synagogue, I continually encounter the power of how we think, power to bring people together, or to push them apart. Because there is […]
May the Omnipresent One Comfort You from His Place
This coming Sabbath service at our synagogue, I’m doing one of the Torah readings, from the Gospels, the first part of John chapter 11. You may notice two funny things in that sentence. Firstly, as part of our Torah service, we don’t only read the standard parshah from the Torah (the first five books: Genesis, […]