Sitemap - 2025 - In This Moment: A Rabbi's Notebook

Drinking the Kool-Aid: What do Jonestown, Masada and Joe Pisarcik have to do with Trump’s Election Sabotage?

In light of what Congress has done, "If not now, when?" is no longer a question. It's an exclamation!

Bill Moyers' death, my recovery and why setting back a nuclear Iran must not be allowed to set back democracy here.

Is It OK to Bring Children into this Broken World?

Did the U.S. just bomb Iran because of geopolitics...or Genesis? Insights from the Tucker Carlson - Ted Cruz debate.

Whatever the ayatollahs get, they deserve. But this cannot devolve into a religious war - P.S., it already has.

Introducing the new Mensch-Marks audiobook. A thank you gift to paid subscribers - and all readers of "In This Moment!

Photos and Headlines from a Historic Weekend

On Borrowed Time: Me, My Dog, and America

June 14 will be America's Day of Judgment. For Jews it will be Shabbat - but for everyone it will feel like Yom Kippur.

Mensch Marks Audiobook

Mensch Marks

"No Kings" misses the point. Trump doesn't think he's king - he thinks he's God.

Introduction: Mensch•Marks

Chapter 1: A Young Rabbi: Are Exuberance and Wisdom the Product of One’s Age?

Chapter 2: Gentleman’s Agreement: How I Learned to Afflict the Comfortable and Comfort the Afflicted

Chapter 3: The Santa Suit: Do the Clothes Make the Rabbi?

Chapter 4: Rising Above the Hate: How Being a Rabbi Has Helped Me to Become a Far More Loving, Far More Forgiving Human Being

Chapter 5: Saturday Morning Fever: Touching Souls in a Germophobic Age

Chapter 6: Mentioning the Unmentionable: Smashing Taboos and Sacred Cows

Chapter 7: Dancing Sheva: Flowing with the Rhythms of Sacred Time

Chapter 8: Superrabbi, the Flawed Model: Taking Myself off the Pedestal

Chapter 9: Shedding the Baggage: Baring My Soul Before God

Chapter 10: Fathers and Sons: The Power of Parental Presence

Chapter 11: The Dangling Knife: The Parent as Sculptor, Mentor, and Shield

Chapter 12: Hugging, Blessing, Letting Go: With Every Embrace There Must Be a Release

Chapter 13: Leaping with Angels: My Sick Child, My Dying Congregant, and Salvation from an Unexpected Source

Chapter 14: My Brother’s Keeper: On Disability and Destiny

Chapter 15: The Peter Panning of America: Can the Past Remain Ever-Present?

Chapter 16: Living on the Back Pages: Holiness Lies in the Sacred Pulse of Daily Life

Chapter 17: The Forbidden Oreo: We Are What We Eat

Chapter 18: The Invisible Fence: Setting Behavioral Boundaries

Chapter 19: The Power Grid: Recognizing the Limits and Potential of One’s Power

Chapter 20: Paradise in a Sandbox: Recovering the Pure Faith of a Child

Chapter 21: The Other Side of the Bed: Healer as Patient

Chapter 22: Numb and Numb-er: My Task Is Not to Numb the Pain but to Highlight the Inherent Beauty of Life

Chapter 23: Goodness and Mercy: My Sudden Realization of Being “the Rabbi”

Chapter 24: Over and Out: The Ultimate Test of Trust

Chapter 25: The Vale of Tears: A Condolence Call to a Place of Unspeakable Suffering

Chapter 26: The Towers: Having the Chutzpah to Reach for the Sky

Chapter 27: The Yarmulke Bin: An Unassuming Beanie Became a Souvenir from Sinai

Chapter 28: Bar Mitzvah Nation: “They Like Us! They Really Like Us.”

Chapter 29: My Father’s Huppah: A Catholic Tevye and the Brave New World of Assimilation

Chapter 30: Jews of the Jungle: Lessons from the Cruel and Supremely Tranquil Savannah

Chapter 31: The Wall and the Mall: Where Is God Truly Found? What Makes a Place “Holy”?

Chapter 32: Where Spring Forever Dwells: Discovering That the Promised Land Is Right Here

Chapter 33: Kosher Pigs: Hypocrisy Can Be a Good Thing

Chapter 34: Crisis: My Greatest Test of Faith

Chapter 35: Championing Civility: It’s Impossible to Avoid Gossip but Essential to Try

Chapter 36: “Do You Think I’m Evil?”: The Stain of Hatred on the Human Soul

Chapter 37: Piercing the Heavens: The Purest Form of Prayer

Chapter 38: Marching for Our Lives, Riding on Shabbat: Sometimes Fulfilling God’s Command Can Only Be Done by Violating It

Chapter 39: Going, Going Gone: Overcoming Tribal Loyalties for the Voice of the Yankees

Chapter 40: Should Jews Turn the Other Cheek? Looking Evil in the Eye

Chapter 41: Getting from “I” to “Wii”: Overcoming Selfishness as a Key to Happiness

Chapter 42: The God of Love: Inheriting a Family Legacy of Unconditional Love

What June 14 will mean for America, as the National Mall becomes Red Square

Friday, the Rabbi Resigned...and Other Profiles in Courage for an Era of Outrage.

What does it mean when the man killed in one of the worst antisemitic attacks in US history…was Christian?

Eurovision shocker proves that people are desperate for a “New Day to Rise,” even as their leaders lag behind.

The MAGA obsession with the R-word used to be a way to “own the libs.” Now it’s much more dangerous.

Pope Leo, the man for the moment, was chosen to inspire fellow Americans to stand up to unprecedented evil.

The world was very different when we helicoptered out of Saigon 50 years ago. It's better now.

Thank you, Donald. You reminded me how my grandmother escaped TO Alcatraz - and was welcomed in America.

The quintessential survivor has died at 100. But her words will live forever - through us.

As Trump's polls slide, it's time to pick a side. There is no middle ground between Recuse and "J'Accuse!"

The Candy Man and Elijah Girl

Thank you, Donald! You've quelled all the animosity toward Jews at campus rallies. Because it’s now all directed against you!

Harvard's "Shot Heard Round the World"

1) Recalling the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen 2) Fight Fiercely, Harvard! 3) Plus, a Special Holiday Gift...

"Maybe Jesus will save her from those Buddhists!"

The “cancer within the presidency” - and within me

Trump's "defense" of Jews on campus is really a protection racket, aimed at destroying the academic integrity Jews hold most sacred

This Passover, Kosher Pig's On the Menu

MAGA has E.D.S (Empathy Derangement Syndrome). Time to Flood the Zone with Empathy.

Of Medicine, Miracles and Media

Some News About Me

Standing up to Jewish hate means standing up to all hate

Voices of Eternity, from Lexington, Concord and Tiananmen Square, when the Promise of America inspired the world:

"WE" Pluribus Unum

Big Truths Can Beat Big Lies

A March Mashup of Holy Days: Ramadan, Lent and...Purim?

The Israeli and American betrayal of Ukraine, at the UN and White House, has been shocking. But the courage of 93 other nations might save us all.

What Moral Clarity Is - And Isn't

Thank you, NYT, for calling a lie a lie.

The Front Pages are the Front Lines and the American Press is Flailing. But not the Brits.

Dear hockey fans, please don’t boo the Canadian anthem

After our national anthem was roundly booed in Canada and everyone hates us, can we send the '28 Olympics back for a refund?

What Does “Thou Shalt Not Kill” Really Mean? Presidential Bible Lesson #2

From Greenland to Gaza to the Gulf - Teaching Trump About "Thou Shalt Not Covet"

The Super Bowl Catch that Wasn't

Would the mass expulsion of an entire population be the most reprehensible single act in American history? Time for some Q and A

My Annual Super Bowl Prediction (Based on Biblical and Other Sources)

A Groundhog Day Reset

Can an executive order condemning antisemitism ever be a bad thing? Yes, when its purpose is not to defend, but to divide.

Fighting ICE with I.C.E

Liberation of Auschwitz, 80 Years On: From Sorrow to Song

Trump's worst nightmare: a transactional God who demands justice, love and humility as payment for saving his life

Musk doubled down on his hateful gesture - the ADL shouldn’t validate it.

The Hebrew word for future teaches us how to face it

A Night of Watching

The Unheeded Prophet

The one who "smelt" it, dealt it

Saving Torah scrolls from flaming synagogues: "A piece of history held in trembling hands."

A Kinder and Gentler Religion

Can Democracy Survive in '25?