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The Work of Adding Our Spark to Everyday Items In the early 2000s, when I was working at Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas, Rabbi David Glickman gave a sermon that has stayed with me for more than two decades. He began, unexpectedly, with Harry Potter. He talked about how, because Harry was a wizard and…

A Grandfather I Never Met, and the Legacy I Inherited Today, January 29, 2026, is my maternal grandfather’s 68th English yahrtzeit. My maternal grandfather was murdered when my mother was thirteen years old. I never met him. I know him through stories, newspaper clippings, and the quiet rules that shaped our home. We were not…

Religion in Public Charter Schools, and Why We Shouldn’t Push for Exception I have been thinking a great deal about this new article from eJewishPhilanthropy, which examines how Oklahoma’s Jewish community is pushing back against a proposed shift in a Hebrew charter school model. Years ago, I was invited to sit on an exploratory committee…

When Justice Spaces Become Unsafe for Jews This piece is being published on MLK weekend intentionally:not because this is a moment of moral clarity, but because it is a moment of moral strain. Jews have long stood in public spaces alongside vulnerable communities because we recognize the terrain. Displacement. Demonization. Conditional belonging. We do not…

Language, Identity, and the Problem of Shared Words “I’m a secular Jew.” It’s a phrase that appears constantly in American Jewish life. People use it as shorthand. Sometimes as a disclaimer. Sometimes as protection. Sometimes because it feels like the only available option when none of the familiar denominational boxes fit. The problem is not…

Back in 2018, while working on my doctoral pursuits, I wrote this blog about how Jewish identity cannot be framed in the Christian construct of “Religious or Spiritual” and began developing a framework based in lived Jewish experience. During that process, with feedback and a few iterations, I landed on a version released in this…

My head is spinning from the total overwhelming nature of JewHate around the world. I was sharing with my non-Jewish psychiatrist how overwhelming it can be to be a Jew right now and even moreso a Jewish professional. I expressed sadness that I am not sure if I will ever have again in my lifetime…

So much of my Judaism is connected to my maternal great-grandmother. While she passed when I was three months old (and we only met once), so much of her Judaism was passed to me through her seven children, her 16 grandchildren, and dozens and dozens of stories. When my mom would use the food processor…

It is Jewish American Heritage Month and I get agitated every time I hear this term. It’s inception was declared by President Bush in 2006 (which was predicated by a Jewish Heritage Week since 1980). I remember the first time I heard the following question debated:  Are we American Jews or Jewish Americans?  I was…

Since February of 2021, I have developed a dozen new anaphylactic allergies to a variety of fruits (added to the four I developed between 1990 and 2006). These allergies include apples, which make the Ashekanzi charoset I grew up lethal for me. After researching several Sephardic and Mizrahi recipes, I realized that I was going…

Thousands of non-Jews order mezuzahs after a pro-Israel Christian puts one on her door in solidarity There is a huge debate this week among Jewish professionals (primarily clergy and educators) on if we are okay with the implications of this headline or if we are really disturbed by it. The headline and screenshot above come…

By now, I am sure most of you have seen and read Mo Husseini’s “50 Completely True Things” post on Medium. It inspired me to write my own list of 50 True Things (with a little educated opinion thrown in).  This list is meant to educate, call to action, and inject some nuance into what…