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One thing I've always liked about being a congregational rabbi is the way this role mixes the tachlit with the tachlis. To risk ruining the joke by explaining it, tachlit is a Hebrew word which means "end" or "ultimate." In Jewish philosophical and mystical texts it sometimes refers to the ultimate, highest, most fully-developed form or purpose of something. In its Yiddish pronunciation, however, …

For a long time I have wrestled with my identity as a “trans rabbi.” In a sense, the case is very clear and unambiguous — I am a rabbi, and I am a transgender woman, no question about that. So why do I sometimes instinctively hesitate for a moment before describing myself as a “trans rabbi?” I suppose it is because I don’t feel like these two things really have anything to do with one another.

When someone afflicted with tzaraat — a mysterious, possibly supernatural skin disease which causes ritual impurity — finds themselves healed, the Torah establishes a process whereby they begin to be assimilated back into the community. Initially, the priest joins them outside the camp — the afflicted person being required to remain outside the camp for the duration of their affliction — and performs a ritual involving two birds:

From the Zohar, parashat Toldot: Come and see: Everyone who busies themselves with the Torah, they preserve the world and preserve every single one of God’s works in its proper form. And there is not a single part of the human body which does not have an aspect of creation which corresponds to it. For indeed, just as a human is divided into many body parts, and all of them exist on their own level and are arranged in relationship to each other, so too is the world.

This past weekend on Shabbat I spoke a little bit about the challenge of Aaron's silence. If you recall, in parashat Shemini, the dedication of the mishkan (the portable sanctuary constructed by the Israelites in the wilderness) is interrupted by a terrible calamity when Aaron's sons Nadav and Avihu are burnt up in a heavenly fire after offering "strange fire" before God.

Holding on to the value of our work in a volatile world. Being a congregational rabbi gives you a very particular perspective on the world’s events. People tend to share things with me about what’s going on in their lives, and in the lives of their relatives. From all those little conversations I tend to get a picture of what people seem to be worried about, what problems they’re currently facing, how they’re trying to deal with those problems — a highly localized picture, to be sure, but as the teachers of the kabbalistic tradition remind us, the microcosm is often a mirror of the macrocosm.

Holding on to the value of our work in a volatile world.