Ma'yan Tikvah's Divrei Earth

What “covers over” your ability to access compassion? What might it mean for compassion to be a compass for you? Growing up, I was taught...

I have been a vegetable and herb gardener for the last 30 years. That means that I have had the pleasure of tasting wonderful tomatoes...

In Parshat Eikev , Deut 11:10-12, the Torah compares the land of Egypt to the land of Canaan. There are two distinctions made. The first...

One of my amazing 7th graders said to me that the second paragraph of the Sh’ma  (the  V’hayu ) says, in his words, “if we follow the...

walk my wild rocky woodland—  indigo bunting families katydids, a woodpecker, the rushing creek timbre. God.   In tones solstice gold...

In his book, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, Alan Lew, of blessed memory, teaches us that the arc of the High Holy Days...

Dear Ones, This Elul we greet and meet in fields of anguish, barely chanting salutations trapped in unrequited prayers   waiting to be...

One of the reasons that we are called “Earthlings,”1  b’nei adam in Hebrew, is because our ability to return to a pristine state of...

The Chasidic Rabbi Nachman of Braslav (1772-1810) was a lifelong sufferer of what was likely depression. When, towards the end of his...

Arise / לָקוּם   Enough! Too long have you  stood still. Arise! Draw near and walk the verdant woodland trails with Me.   אָז רַב לָכֶם...

Midrash Tehilim  65:4: “Teshuvah is like the sea which is never barred, so that whoever desires to bathe in it can do so whenever they...

I sit in my backyard on a cool and beautiful August day. Cicadas and crickets buzz. It’s a workday, but if my laptop’s on, even hours I...

Elul is a time for reflection, a time for teshuvah, return to G!d and to our best selves, in preparation for the Days of Awe, the holiest...