לחם חן — Lechem Chein

  Modern Kinnah Tisha B’Av arrives every year with the same stark invitation: Sit on the floor. Mourn. Grieve. Stay with the loss. We hear similar language everywhere today. Therapists tell us to process our emotions. Books advise us to “feel our feelings.” Friends remind us to “give ourselves permission to grieve.” But standard advice rarely explains what that actually looks like. What does “giving yourself permission” look like? Standing in front of a mirror and announcing, “It’s okay. You may grieve now” ? I don’t think most of us struggle to grieve because we lack permission. I think we struggle because we’ve become extraordinarily, expertly good at doing something else. Grieving isn’t creating sadness. It is stopping all the ways we’ve learned to interrupt it. Our First Instinct The moment pain appears—any pain—our mind rushes in to defend itself against the raw impact: We spiritualize it: “Everything Hashem does is for the good.” / “They were a pure soul who finished their m...

What Am I Ready to Receive? A Shavuos Reflection on נעשה ונשמע Lately, I’ve been realizing how much of my life I can spend in my head. Thinking through things. Analyzing them. Preparing for them. Running every possible outcome before I take one step forward. What if this happens? What if I’m wrong? What if I don’t understand enough yet? What if I’m not ready? For a long time, that kind of thinking helped me. It helped me survive. It helped me stay ahead of things. It gave me the feeling that if I could just understand enough, prepare enough, and predict enough, I would be safe. But there is a point where thinking stops being clarity and starts becoming a cage.  The mind keeps circling, not because it is finding truth, but because it is afraid to move. Everyone has their own version of this. For some people it is overthinking. For others it is staying busy, staying useful, staying in control, staying numb, or staying one step removed from the thing itself.  Most of us know some...

The Seder moves in a very clear order. Step by step. קדש, ורחץ, כרפס… A steady movement forward. But in the middle of it, we pause and name the plagues. Moments that don’t feel steady at all. Moments where something breaks. ----- I put together two short reflection pieces for this year. One follows the fifteen steps of the Seder, noticing how we move forward, one step at a time. The other sits with the ten plagues, the moments that disrupt, shift, and force something to change. You can use them on your own, or as conversation starters with family or friends. ----- They’re not meant to replace the Seder or any of the Torah shared around the table. Just something to sit alongside it, or to come back to later, when things are quieter. Download both reflections click here (print double-sided).

Part of an ongoing reflection this year on presence, sobriety, voice, and the tools we use along the way. ⸻ On shame and exposure  Someone posted recently: “Thinking of starting a support group for those suffering from AI shame. We all use it for meal planning, business development, tech support and therapy. But often get stuck saying so out loud.” It made me smile. And then it made me pause. Support groups don’t usually form when something is rare. They form when something is common but uncomfortable, when enough people are quietly doing the same thing and quietly wondering if they’re the only one. That’s when shame becomes communal. I use it too. Sometimes quietly. Sometimes more openly. I’ve written before about using tools to help find my voice again — about how even Moshe Rabbeinu turns to the tool of song at the end of his leadership. And yes, this article was written with the help of AI as well. Does that make it less real? The stories are mine. The questions are mine. The...

Download printable version (PDF)   Chanukah Reflections Lighting With the Parsha Where We Are Opening Reflection On Chanukah, we don’t begin by filling the room with light. We begin with a single flame. One candle. One night. One small act. We light, and then we watch. We don’t rush the glow. We let it settle, even when the world around us feels unsettled or dark. During Chanukah, the Torah includes special holiday readings.  For this practice, we’re setting those aside and letting the Parsha of the week guide our nightly reflection. Each night of Chanukah, we move through a different aliya of Parshas Miketz, following the weekly parsha as it unfolds. On the eighth night, we step naturally into the opening aliya of Vayigash, as the story begins to turn. We’re not approaching the parsha as a lesson or analysis, but as a lens. For these nights, the parsha becomes a kind of shamash — not one of the candles, and not the focus of our attention, but the steady source that helps eac...