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The tallit has four corners. We are commanded to gather them.
To take what is spread out and hold it, all at once.

The Jewish year holds every season: the narrow place and the open one, the weeping and the dancing, the roof woven with gaps on purpose so the stars come through.
We are not asked to be one thing at a time.
The world has not always known what to do with people who refuse to be one thing.

Kanfot ha'aretz — the corners of the earth, gathered in.
We who grieved this year and celebrated this year are whole.
We belong here, and also there.

Gather the corners. You are not too much to hold.

What’s the deal with Jews & Toy Story? 🤠✡️🧸

Shavuah tov and welcome back to “Jews &” — a series where I explain the connections between random things and Judaism! Today: Toy Story.

With rumors of a Taylor Swift x Toy Story 5 collab sending the internet into chaos, and the film dropping June 19, the timing felt right.

Toy Story 5 will be Randy Newman’s tenth Pixar collaboration. Mr. Potato Head returns, voiced by Jeff Bergman, since Rickles is gone.

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Lag BaOmer (the 33rd day of counting the Omer) has two origin stories.

The one we're often taught is that 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva's students died of a plague during the Omer for not respecting each other, the plague lifted on day 33 (lag = 33), and so we mourn for 32 days and party on the 33rd.

But historically, they died in the Bar Kokhba revolt against Rome (132–135 CE), a doomed messianic uprising Akiva himself endorsed. Rav Henkin put it plainly — "died of plague" was code for "died fighting Rome." The Talmud was compiled under Roman rule, and you write what you can.

So Lag BaOmer might mark a pause inside a war, not the end of one. The Omer mourning doesn't appear until the Geonic era (c. 600–1000 CE), centuries after the fact. The rhetorical move they made — calling a war a plague, calling a defeat a celebration, calling a pause an ending — is one we're watching get made in real time, while the consequences keep counting whether or not the clock does.

I love a campfire. Light one anyway — just know what it's for, and what it isn't.

Today is the 11th day of the Omer: Hod she'b'Gevurah — the humility of strength. It's the quality that asks: what do your limits cost someone else?

On Yom HaShoah, I keep returning to a paper I wrote in high school about why the United States didn't stop the Holocaust. The quota system designed to keep Eastern European Jews out. The Wagner-Rogers Bill — 20,000 refugee children — killed in committee. The St. Louis turned away from Florida while the Coast Guard watched. The War Refugee Board, five years too late.

America had power. America had information. What it refused was the reckoning.

Swipe for the history. Sit with the question at the end.

The Hebrew month of Nisan began last night 🌿🐑

Nisan is the month the Torah calls the first. Not Tishrei, with its new year and its judgment — Nisan. The month of the Exodus. The month of spring. The month where the whole story of becoming a people begins.

There's a teaching that thirty days before Pesach, you start preparing. Which means the preparation starts in Adar, while you're still celebrating Purim. The joy of one month carries you into the work of the next.

Nisan asks something specific: tell the story. Not just know it — tell it, at the table, to the people in front of you, as if you were there. Because the Haggadah says you were.

Some things to sit with this month:
🌿 What does freedom actually look like for you right now?
🐑 What are you still carrying from your Narrow Place?
🕯️ Whose story needs to be told at your table this year?

I’m a Jewish educator, sitting this morning with hundreds of other Jewish leaders at B’Yachad, the convention — the day after a man drove a truck into a synagogue school. I’ve been trying to figure out what I feel. This is what came up.

לֹא־טוֹב הֱיוֹת הָאָדָם לְבַדּוֹ

Tu BiSh’vat is the birthday of the trees 🌳 which always feels strange in the northeast, when it’s the middle of winter and nothing looks alive.

I got to write the program and haggadah for Society Hill Synagogue’s Hebrew School Tu BiSh’vat seder — Strong Roots, Open Branches — and it was so beautiful to celebrate it together (PreK-7th grade!) on Saturday 🌿 Swipe through to see the haggadah!

In the Tu BiSh’vat seder, we name that growth starts long before we can see it. We drink juice and move through different kinds of fruit (🍉fruit with hard shells, 🥑fruit with pits, 🫐fruit you can eat all of, and 🍋fruit you don’t eat at all) to talk about protection, strength, sharing, and care.

❄️Strong roots help us stand tall, even when we can’t see them growing.

🌸What we carry inside us matters, even before the world can see it growing.

☀️Open branches reach out and touch each other, connecting a forest to make it strong.

🍂We plant for the future. Strong roots. Open branches.

What’s the deal with Jews & Coffee?? ☕✡️

Back by popular demand: welcome to “Jews &” — a series where I explore the surprising connections between everyday things and Jewish history, culture, and ritual.

Did Jews invent coffee? No.
Did we immediately ritualize it, legislate it, debate it, build businesses around it, write poetry about it, and accidentally produce the most widely printed Haggadah of all time because of it?
…Yes. ☕

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Beth Israel in Jackson was set on fire — again — and Jewish tradition has language for fire that is tended and fire that destroys.

It names esh zarah — fire brought where it was not asked for — and also teaches the practice of tending the ner tamid, the light kept with care in Jewish space.

Jewish life in Jackson persists.

What’s the deal with Jews & Oil?? ✡️🕎

Back by Popular Demand: Welcome to “Jews &,” a series where I explore the surprising connections between everyday things and Judaism.

It’s Hanukkah, so it felt like the right moment to bring the series back.

Oil shows up everywhere in Jewish life: in the Temple, in law, in the Hanukkah story, and in the foods Jews have cooked across the diaspora.

This post looks at how a single material moves between ritual and daily life — and why the details matter.

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