Current Writings (Scroll to the bottom for more)
Genesis - Bereshit
Weekly Parsha Commentary
These commentaries are designed to capture the kind of concerns our indigenous ancestors might have had. I then offer probing questions to deepen our connection with the more than human world, our tradition and ourselves. You are in the right place if your experience has been that the commentaries you routinely read and hear simply don’t speak to your spiritual connection with the earth and with humans as earth connected beings
Goal One
A radically different perspective on what might be emphasized in the Torah reading. This perspective aligns with much of what our oral, indigenous ancestors would have focused on. It speaks to reclaiming a spiritual connection with the earth.
Goal Two
Questions that invite you to apply these perspectives to your own life. If you work these questions, you will deepen your relationship with the more than human world and gain clarity about yourself.
Goal Three
Finding like minded people. If you are both a committed Jew in some sense, and committed to an earth based spirituality, you probably have struggled with how to integrate those two commitments. This is a home for you to study with other people walking similar paths.
Commenting on the parsha of the week is one of the most common ways we Jews have explored the connection between our ancestral heritage in which we are grounded and our contemporary world. This contemporary world has long been different than the picture presented in the five books of Moses. We rapidly became a displaced tribe, at first with some vestige of political power and territorial stability in the period from Solomon’s death to the destruction of the second temple. Then we had no physical homeland at all until the reestablishment of the state of Israel in 1947.
This commentary, I believe, is unique in its uplifting of the ancient practices and beliefs of our ancestors that have been suppressed or modified in Rabbinic Judaism.
Writings by Book
Exodus - Shemot
Leviticus - Vayikrah
Numbers - Bamidbar
Deuteronomy - Devarim
