The Visual Language of Norms in Judaism -- And We are the Poorer for Losing It

This is a Drash on Parashat Tetzaveh, an Exodus portion about the priestly clothing that usually elicits shallow reflections on clothes. Instead, I try to bring to life the amazing living language of garments in Jewish history -- a language of norms embedded in visual cues. It's a language modern culture has thrown away, and the values that go with it, and we are the poorer for it.

For parashat Terumah, the Rabbis pair a Torah reading about Terumah, donation from the heart, with the account of Solomon's building of the first Temple, which was done using "mas," forced labor, the customary tax of the time. But wasn't that what was forced on the Israelites in Egypt, and to which much of the Torah is a direct response? Shouldn't we be just a little bit uncomfortable?

The 2nd Commandment says not to make a chiseled thing part of our worship, yet the 10 Commandments actually are a chiseled thing! In this podcast, I show how the Jewish tradition the notion that it's okay in this instance because we make divine speech --words chiseled on these chiseled stones!-- the center of our worship practice. This changes everything: holiness comes through the holiness of speech, both divine in creating worlds and in creating instructions for how to live, and through our own speech. Instead of an image or an idol, we have speech. I also cover how the 10 Statements (Torah) became the 10 Commandments (Christianity) and so the Rabbis renamed them the 10 Speakings.

My remarks from a local rally.

Drawing on the book "(Un)kind: How 'Be Kind' Entrenches Sexism" by Victoria Smith and Ellen Scherr's essay "The Neuroscience of Why You Suddenly Can’t Pretend Anymore," I examine Jacob's deathbed blessings to his sons, which are impartial statements of fact with neither personal commentary nor people-pleasing softening. I see in my own life the draw of middle age to convey factual statements without personal judgment, but the societal messages that everything has to be couched in uplifting, taking-care-of-others'-feelings language or you're a bad person or a bad supervisor.

At the end of Genesis, Joseph centralizes the agricultural system of Egypt, saving the country from collapse due to upcoming years of bad crops (e.g. due to drought), but turning farmers into serfs upon their own land in the process. The Rabbis debate whether Joseph did a good thing or a bad thing to the people. I take two stories from the headlines to take each side of this debate: first, the collapse of American farms due to corporate monopolies (turning American farmers into serfs on their own land), and second, the upcoming collapse of great world cities like Tehran if they refuse to centralize power and exercise eminent domain to enforce collective action.

My Kol Nidrei 2025 Sermon on how our phones are amplifying the centrifugal force of the pull of our individual lives, sacrificing the centripetal force of community, by holding out a fake community, a false version of ourselves (the shadow masquerading as the soul), and building Temples for us to worship the A.I. gods.

This is a revision of a podcast I released several years ago. It focuses on Isaac as the patriarch of Imposter Syndrome. In my own life, I've come to make peace with my own Imposter Syndrome, seeing the anxiety I must live with as a gift that leads me not to shame, but to service. It has made me appreciate Isaac enormously.

I relate the debate from Bereishit Rabbah to This American Life episode 550.

Most of us have been avoiding the painful conversations with friends and family over Gaza. Why? It seems like we have no common frame of reference, and so it hardly seems worth it. In this Rosh Hashanah sermon, I do something a little bizarre: I use Judaism's main halakhic code about war -- Maimonides' codification of all the Torah's statements on war-- to illuminate the war we are at with ourselves. My hope is that it opens us all up a little to each other.