I used to tell a story about my oldest child. When he was close to two years-old, we were playing with some ice cubes from a drink and I asked him if he knew what ice turned into when it melted...

Each year we are meant to imagine receiving the Torah from Mt. Sinai. Some years, as it turns out, we actually get to receive the Torah from Mt. Sinai...

I run about five years behind in my fiction reading. I read The Corrections in 2006. I read Americanah in 2018. I like to wait for all the hubbub to die down before picking up an acclaimed novel...

Considering the significant rainfall that many of us experienced in the last days, I was reminded of a poem by Yehuda Amichai...

No prompt tonight as we enter the weekly day of rest, Shabbat. See you tomorrow for our next Daily Creative Prompt for Elul!

Of the many things that I admire about my dad, I love that he drives around with a plastic bag full of rocks in his trunk...

I have been asked before: are the holidays early this year or are they late? What a wonderfully Jewish question...

Though I don’t often admit it in conversation with students, I regularly thank the heavens that I am not a young person right now...

Engaging in cheshbon hanefesh, the soul accounting of this season, requires a certain amount of hope. Without it, the process would feel empty and meaningless...

I sometimes struggle with our kabbalistic traditions. I hit forty a few years ago, but, despite having reached the proper age, I still can’t wrap my head around some of the esoteric traditions that were passed down in the Zohar and elucidated by the Chasidic masters...

It is hard to write about brokenness this year. I have no desire to idealize or glorify it, as I may have in the past...

No prompt tonight as we enter the weekly day of rest, Shabbat. See you tomorrow for our next Daily Creative Prompt for Elul!

Our morning prayers begin, famously, with the words moda/eh ani lefanecha. This initial acknowledgment of gratitude is followed, in the Ashkenazi tradition, by a line from Psalms that might be less familiar...

There is an uneasiness that I sense amongst some of my friends and colleagues during this month of reflection. Is it possible that Elul is being co-opted by the self-help-industrial-complex?

Last week I went to a retirement party at Emory; a long-time facilities employee was leaving his position as the custodian of the university’s chapel...

Every now and then I come across a poem during the year and know instantly that it will find its way into Elul. That is how I felt about this poem from a cycle entitled Five Psalms by Mark Jarman...

Our kids sometimes complain that our house is too wooden. There is, indeed, a great deal of exposed wood throughout the house...

The 12th of Elul marks the yahrzeit of the Chasidic master R’ Simcha Bunim of Peshischa. A great rebbe and a humble apothecary, R’ Simcha Bunim’s name is most often invoked around the famous teaching that a person should always have two pockets...

No prompt tonight as we enter the weekly day of rest, Shabbat. See you tomorrow for our next Daily Creative Prompt for Elul!

The Norwegian novelist, Karl Ove Knausgaard, published a series of shorter autobiographical books based on the four seasons of the year. Though I doubt he was influenced by the rhythms of the Jewish year, his first book in the quartet is Autumn...