Meditations

MEDITATION: Your True Tree Self (Parashat Shoftim)

This meditation deals with the phrase ki ha’adam etz hasadeh, “for a person is a tree of the field” (Deuteronomy 21:19), exploring what it might feel like to really imagine yourself as a tree, the majesty and the stillness, the groundedness and the sense of connection. This phrase is said in the context of war […]

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MEDITATION: Being Seen by God (Parashat Re’eh)

In this meditation, we consider the mitzvah of re’ayon, of coming to the Temple three times a year to “be seen” by God, a mitzvah which appears at the end of our parsha. We explore two aspects of the feeling of being seen by God, the feeling of having one’s suffering be seen and the

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MEDITATION: Our Hunger, But Not For bread (Parashat Eikev)

In this meditation, we get in touch with the ache of our hunger, our yearning, not for bread, but for connection to God, and we explore the different entry points . . . (Click image to read more)

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MEDITATION: The Faith We Need For the Journey (Parashat Devarim)

In this meditation, we explore what “this thing” is that they and maybe we don’t believe or trust in — what stops us from fully moving forward on our journey to the promised land, to our full potential destiny? (click image to read more and listen)

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MEDITATION: The Steady Presence of Serach bat Asher (Parashat Pinchas)

Serach, the daughter of Asher, lived a very long time — she lived through the descent to Egypt and the enslavement, the redemption, the desert, and the entrance to the land of Israel. She is listed in our parsha in the census (Numbers 26:46), one of the only women to be mentioned, and she is

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MEDITATION: Coming into Alignment with the Divine (Parashat Balak)

In the story of Balaam, we see Balaam undergoing a process of coming into greater alignment with God’s will for him. He begins out of alignment, in opposition really, and ends up becoming a vessel for God’s blessing in the world. In this this meditation, we use Balaam’s story as a way to explore our

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MEDITATION: How to Pray — The Snake Story (Parashat Chukat)

In this meditation, we look at the story of the snake bites and Moshe’s placement of a snake on a pole for the people to look at in order to be healed. We explore what this story teaches us about how to pray for physical and emotional healing — the need to see very clearly

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MEDITATION: The Hole Inside Us (Parashat Korach)

In this meditation, we explore the feelings behind Korach’s rebellion, the sense of not-enoughness, of lack, of wanting, that in some way we all feel inside, the sense of a hole inside, which for Korach, manifested outside him as the earth swallowing him up. We spend our lives dealing with these holes as Korach did,

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MEDITATION: Holding Both the Fear and the Yud Inside Us (Parashat Shelach)

In this meditation, we explore the story of the scouts. We connect to the fear and the doubt that the 10 scouts and the Israelites felt. We find those places inside us that are terrified of new things, that feel like grasshoppers in some way. And then we also touch the place of the “yud”

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MEDITATION: Vayehi Beneso’a Ha’aron: To Journey and To Rest (Parashat Beha’alotecha)

In this meditation, we explore the passage that is bracketed by upside down “nuns” in the Torah, a passage whose text is familiar to us from the Torah service in shul. First, we explore the feeling of rising up in divine power and having our internal “enemies” scatter in the face of that strength, and

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