A repetition in the Torah is a blinking neon sign on a desert highway. For the rabbis, repetition is a hermeneutical hook – an opportunity to bait and repeat an explanation as if to say, “yes, that thing we just said in Leviticus 11:10, when we mentioned an abomination for eating anything in the sea without scales or fins we repeat in 11:12 to ensure that Torah is explicit in this prohibition – no shrimp!”

Both fins and scales only appear in all of Tanach twice – Deuteronomy and Ezekiel, 29:4 “Cling to your scales.”

These words are spoken against Pharaoh, in perhaps our most psychedelic and mysterious text, Ezekiel, the prophet of the outer reaches of time and space. Here, these words descend as a warning against Pharaoh of what God will do against the ultimate force of evil: PeyRah, the evil tongue, that which enslaves us. It is as if the power of these words appear as a declaration against all evil, one that is to be placed on our tongues, on our will, on our ever base suggestion.

Torah does not work in linear space – we cannot hypertext it, AI it or understand it in binaries. It is holographic, like an act of submersing ourselves deep into primordial waters of creation, and emerge with a body renewed. Perhaps “no shrimp” is to say “no body that is not capable of a spiritual journey.” This Pesach, may we all be kosher, and may we all be free.

Rabbi Lori Shapiro for Jewish Journal, April 2026

The concept of God as a teacher is not something that we talk about these days. It seems that most of the troubles afflicting our souls spring from everyone already knowing what God wants of us; in fact, many are experts in implementing these assumptions.

The most important word in this parsha is “m’lamaid” – as in, “I am instructing” — as in God is our teacher. With AI and ChatGPT on the brink of overtaking the space our minds have formally inhabited, maybe this is a good time to pay attention to this idea: God is still teaching us today.

The rest of the verse is specious and interpreted wildly; every generation understands it and implements according to their time so “we may live and enter and engage with the land as a holy inheritance that ties us to our ancestors.” However, it takes humility to be a good student, and that middah is the opposite of what is trending these days.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks shared some essential insights into humility: True humility is mindlessness of self. An anav (the biblical word used for humble person) is one who never thinks about himself because he has more important things to think about. I once heard someone say about a religious leader: “He took God so seriously that he didn’t need to take himself seriously at all.”

May we all find humility and favor curiosity, which breeds compassion, as we find our way back as Students of God.

Rabbi Lori Shapiro for Jewish Journal, August 2025

From ICE protests in LA to “No Kings” protests nationwide, our own country moves through a time of quaking unrest. The foundation of power and those who wield it tremors as races begin to appear on the horizon. No leader is safe. For those of us who are not politically minded, the noise is deafening, as is the silence. However, what remains unassailable is that the role of those who pursue leadership will always come under question. And this week’s Torah portion is no different.

Parshat Shelach features the Israelites losing faith (again), and upon hearing the report from the spies’ reconnaissance mission into “the land of Canaan,” they stage a protest of their own. Their protest signs read with a jingoism like “Hell no, we won’t go,” “Praying for a better God for my children” and “He’s not my King.” The God character assumes the role of the failed leader, and faith is lost by all as doom and gloom and spiritual practice don’t mix. 

The “God Character” is reminded by Moses of who he is – as “slow to anger” is one of 13 attributes of God’s own self description (Exodus 34:6-7).  Moses begins his approach with an interesting abbreviation of God’s Exodus utterance, and states:  יְהֹוָ֗ה אֶ֤רֶךְ אַפַּ֙יִם֙  (Numbers 14:18) in this week’s Torah portion. Rashi (11th c.) tells this story to grant all of us, 1,000 years later, with perhaps the eyes to see: 

When Moses ascended to Heaven, Moses found God writing the words “The Lord is Long Suffering.” Moses asked “Surely, only for the righteous?” Whereby God responded, “To the Wicked, also.” Whereupon Moses said: “The wicked — let them perish!” He (the Lord) replied to him: “I swear by your life that you shall eventually need this thing (the extension of My mercy also to the wicked)”.

As previously mentioned, we have collectively fallen through the looking glass, gone on a collective psychedelic journey and are spinning right round. For anyone with half a heart, the whole picture does not make sense. Many felt deep pain at the images coming out of Gaza and the ICE round ups, and many took to the streets in protest.

But where is the protest for Israel?

Like so many of our family members – or if we can be honest, our own selves – Israel is both righteous and wicked, perfect and flawed, dynamic and sleepy; it aspires towards human visions of the highest ideals for humanity and falls to the most base. Israel is a Rorschach for the trauma within, as its name itself means “ones who struggle with God.” Founded from the pursuit of self-determination for the Jewish people, it is proof that the Palestinians can do it, too, that Dreamers can make something for themselves in the USA and that colonialism can end and people can return to their homeland. Our sacred covenant as Jews – all Jews, and especially American Jews, as ours is a covenantal land as well (ask any Mormon); in exchange for this sacred covenant returning us to our homeland from 3000 years ago, we have a Disneyland for our Souls. A place that will always welcome us, support our dreams and offer endless Shabbos dinners, cafes for commiseration, jobs in arguably the greatest tech sector in the world and invitations into Knowing our Souls. 

But, most American Jews today, especially the “Nones” – those who are “Spiritual but not Religious” – are uneasy at the thought of Israel. It seems that a lack of moral connection to spiritual pursuit has left a mind and soul disconnected from the family history that gave them the privilege to claim their apathy or alexithymia. The doubt or ambivalence felt by so many (like the ancient Israelites given some bad news) is the crux of their spiritual pursuits of moral bypass; an obsession with psychedelics, self-healing, Instagram tile-therapy and all other massaging of bodies and minds to bypass the work of the soul. Israel represents, at its most glorious, that the soul and who we are and how we show up in this world is intertwined, and any shirking of that truth will lead to a feeling of emptiness. In short, Israel offers us Ethical Monotheism for the Spiritual Warrior.

Which is why we all see how complicated that plays out, and which is why even God expresses that “I am long suffering for both the wicked and the righteous.” For like all of us, Israel is both. No better and no worse than any of us.

From New York Magazine to the “No Kings Day” marches, moral sanctimony is a new national epidemic in the US. It is founded on the principle that the person carrying the sign is more righteous than the person they castigate on their sign. Outside of a moral universe, or within a social media cosmos, we can pretend to be whomever we want to be. But moral consistency is the deepest of spiritual practices, and it is actually a lot easier to wake up every day for a 5 am Cross Fit or 6 am Yoga class than it is to commit to a curiosity of morality and ethics. 

Israel’s war in Iran is NOT a deflection of Gaza. It is the outcome of what began on October 7. What happened in Gaza has been a moral war with collateral damage caused by many players and we grieve for the children and innocent who have and are suffering. We even send them food and medical care, and if we had a Time Machine, would see how much Israel will do to help Palestinians as well as Jews worldwide. There are talks in the works to help people and advance their lives to the privilege all of us reading this has. And I add, it will be Jews around the world helping. 

As for now, what do we do? We pray for the righteous and we pray for the evil. On all sides and in all countries. We pray for the turning of hearts of judgement into hearts of compassion. We pray for their well-being and their ability to have a plan for their government that will restore a balance of power for all of their citizens. We pray for the citizens of Iran (whom the Israelis have magnificently spared in their assault); we pray for women’s rights in the region and for the future of Gaza as a stable one. And we acknowledge this imperfect world filled with imperfect humans, and pray that America never knows of terror as Israel knows of because Israel, our homeland, has done the dirty work for the rest of us. And we pray that our prayers are heard within and we return to a prayer practice that increases our ability to contribute to a moral world – not a sanctimonious one – but a moral world of complexity and subtlety. For ethics and morals require practice. 

Bless the Righteous. Bless the Wicked. And pray for the discernment to know the difference. 

With love and a prayer for all in the region to feel the promise of Torah and lead a self-determined life free of terror,

Rabbi Lori

And for those who want to begin a prayer practice, please use this reference guide as a start. Prepared with my AJR/CA colleagues, it’s a good 1.0 for the “Jew-ishly curious and those who love us.” Godspeed.

Alongside the Rio Grande is a small town named after a game show where Elon Musk set up camp for Space X. Truth or Consequences pairs perfectly with June 13, 2025.

As I write these words alongside its bath houses and very far away from just about anywhere, Israel defends itself against long range missiles and drones from Iran’s attack showering upon the Tel Aviv night sky. Israelis run in and out of bomb shelters on yet another sleepless night for an already traumatized people. And the international stage lights up for what will not be (nor has been) a short run. 

Palestinians also seek shelter, as the Houthis fire missiles from Yemen falling short of Israel, and hitting Palestinian villages. Several Israeli fighter jets have already been shot down by Iran, and Israeli pilots eject into lands yet unknown. Children and mothers in Gaza are all too familiar with these air raids, as they have witnessed and suffered from them for almost 20 months. Perhaps they, too, are thinking, “Truth and Consequences.”

Beneath the streets of Gaza, 55 hostages remain unaccounted for, at least 20 of them, we know, alive and living in tunnels built by Hamas over the past 20 years with money sent from international aid to create a Gazan Riviera, but instead, used to militarize and radicalize a people without a leadership alternative. In the region known as Gaza, everyone suffers from this Truth and its Consequences. 

And on the streets of Los Angeles, the ICE raids erupt a second Los Angeles fire this year, as concrete is pulled from overpasses and thrown onto police vehicles and Waymos are ordered so that they can be set aflame as a few miles away friends sleep on the couches of their family having lost their homes in the Altadena and Palisades fires (and they didn’t have insurance. Or were renters. Or have fallen into depression as they were not prepared for this). Our city seems surprised that “illegal citizens are being pulled away, denied habeas corpus” as most of us don’t even know what that means anymore. Truth and Consequences.

Over 25 years ago, Jack Nicholson in Aaron Sorkin’s “A Few Good Men” shouted into the camera at America, “You can’t handle the truth.” In the face of fewer and fewer people engaging in the moral interplay that religious spiritual communities ask of us, and instead, “choose yoga or gratitude groups,” it is the Truth that has come back to bite us. The truth that we need to “create a path for all dreamers who want to contribute positively to our land to become Americans” just as Israel creates a path for all Jews to become Israelis. The Truth that “we need the hostages returned home” so that we can leave Gaza and allow the creation of an infrastructure so that the Palestinians there can begin their own post-trauma Truth journey outside the grip of Hamas and Iran’s indoctrination. The Truth is that Bibi has proven to be Biblical in his leadership, leading Israel to do the world’s dirty work, while also, arguably, overstaying his welcome, as his leadership of Israel is as long as some dictators in recent history. Another Truth is for Israel to self-define new leadership and its future on its own, as we are not Israelis and it is upon them to innovate to Israel’s vision of a Liberal Democracy as radicalized regimes do not do democracy well. And for the US, it’s time to admit the Truth – that both the Left and the Right have gone too far, and we need to return to a reigning regime of Logic and Reasoning rooted in the concept that if we continue to live in naval gazing denial, it’s only a matter of time that the Consequences find their way onto our own soil.

Apropos to all of the above – this week’s Torah portion features God’s sick sense of humor. Reading it as “Fantasy Literature” as the Book of Numbers is truly other worldly, we could say that this is the Land of Lewis Carroll where logic and reasoning are thrown on their heads as well as challenged like a physics experiment. Quayle fall from the sky as the Israelites complain of hunger; Miriam’s body turns squamous as her punishment for the way she uses language against Moses. And we are instructed about how to bang gold into a candelabra to illuminate ourselves in the midst of all of this vivid darkness. It’s a Stranger Things world kind of quid pro quo.  

As we watch this horror show from the portals of glass in the palm of our hands as fireworks illuminate the Tel Aviv sky like Shabbos candles, may we put down our screens and turn to the wise advice from Ibn Ezra’s insight from the Torah portion (Numbers 10:9): “When you are at war in your land against an aggressor who attacks you, you shall sound short blasts on the trumpets, that you may be remembered before your God and be delivered from your enemies.” Ibn Ezra, in his commentary, remarks that the sounds of the shofar are to be read also as “an alarm or a reminder for the people to call out to God.”  

As in: Pray. 

At a time where most believe that a cold plunge is a good enough way to feel reset and renewed and God-optional is a real choice in most religious institutions in the US, that might not be helpful. But, in a world of Truth or Consequences, perhaps the best way to describe God is through Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “For Every Action, there is an Equal and Opposite Reaction.” 

And so – pray. Pray to increase our awareness of what we can understand, pray for our ability to discern the truth from manipulation and illusion; pray for the grace to make choices that merit the highest human good and pray for the humility to meet the consequences that come when our best intentions fall short.

Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. 

We pray to counter the evil in those tunnels and to offer the world the Truth we are looking for – a return of the hostages home. We pray that all children in Gaza have a better future ahead of them and the support they need right now to get there. We pray that our friends in Israel (including beloved Open Temple musician Josh Goldberg) be held through this time and find his way home to Andrea in Nashville safely soon. We pray that all living in the United States return to the holiness of this land, and feel in every footstep its radiant and gracious truth of freedom for all who cultivate and nurture it. We pray for all world leaders who support peace and pray that those who support destruction find a new job. We pray that holy community find its way into our lives as the loneliness in the US is a part of what is tearing it apart. We pray for a return to logic and reasoning, we pray for a return to education where we focus on what is important and not surface deep. We pray that curiosity and compassion lead us through these times and we pray that we have the courage to create personal spiritual practices that help us deal with our truths, whatever they may be. We pray to accept what we can’t change and change what we can’t accept and to discern the difference as that is what Truth requires of us. 

As nothing may come from our prayers but a change of ourselves. And then, perhaps, our prayers will empower every human in this world to have space for their own prayers. As after we pray, we are better suited to deal with Truth when it comes along and triggers us. For, if we can’t handle the Truth, we won’t in any way be prepared for the Consequences…

Rabbi S.R. Hirsch comments that tzara’ath could not be a bodily disease, as “the Talmud teaches that if the symptoms of tzara’ath appear on a newlywed or during a festival season, the Kohen does not examine the affliction or declare it to be tamei (impure).” Rather, tza’arah is a physical manifestation of a spiritual malaise. Rabbis of an apodictic nature suggest that the malady is a punishment for transgressions; a corrective of moral transgression. Considering new theories in modern medicine, is this relationship between transgression and bodily punishment an outrageous theological assertion? 

Bessel van der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score” suggests otherwise: trauma, and even our smallest actions, affect the body, brain, nervous system and impacts our body’s homeostasis, resulting in chronic stress responses that increase our cortisol and adrenaline. A suppressed immune system can disrupt our healing process, increasing inflammation and risk of related auto-immune diseases. 

Our “glymphatic system” works as the brain’s “waste removal,” flushing toxins and stress chemicals, supporting the body’s ability to cleanse. Van der Kolk describes cerebrospinal fluid washing through the brain tissue for cleansing. Timeless healing modalities such as meditation, yoga, and prayer and more newfangled ones like biofeedback and glymphatic massage – a form of massage using brain scans, deep lymphatic drainage, cupping and heat – move the body and brain into cleansing mode. 

Torah is a blueprint for life; and the rabbi’s assertion of tz’arah not as a communicative disease, but as a spiritual ailment, indeed, keeps the score.

Rabbi Lori Shapiro for Jewish Journal, April 2025

משלי י״ב:כ״ה

 כה  דְּאָגָ֣ה בְלֶב־אִ֣ישׁ יַשְׁחֶ֑נָּה וְדָבָ֖ר ט֣וֹב יְשַׂמְּחֶֽנָּה׃ 

If there is anxiety in a man’s mind let him quash it, And turn it into joy with a good word. 
-Proverbs 12:25

Before opening my phone, I have a new spiritual practice these days. I whisper these words from Proverbs to myself as an incantation for more than perspective, but a beckoning of my frontal lobe to command the interaction I am about to have. I don’t know if you feel this, but I find this glass (that you may be holding right now in the palm of your hand) to be an undue burden upon my soul. So many times a day, I hear a whisper emanating as if from the space beyond: “WE ARE NOT MEANT TO KNOW ALL OF THIS, HAVE ACCESS TO ALL OF THIS, BE EXPOSED TO ALL OF THIS…PUT IT DOWN, BEFORE IT BESMIRCHES YOUR SOUL!” (yes, the outer universe of my inner life uses the word besmirch). And as it is but a whisper, I am too often in the habit of its betrayal.

Our attention is held as prey to this Leviathan amidst a tsunami of information washing us away from our spiritual attentiveness as it feeds our anxiety. Even our commanding 11^th Century commentator Rashi acknowledges that we must “divert our attention from our worry!” There is only one way through, friends, and our invitation into this path approaches.

This year’s Passover Seder Quest offers a Threshold into reclaiming a personal spiritual practice despite the Pharaohs in our Midst. Through joy, disruption, radical ritual and a lot of critical thinking as we pilgrimage through Venice, CA, our objective is to collectively reclaim our mind’s (and heart’s) discipline of attention. 

[As I write these words, the Nefarious Notifications Chime ceaselessly commands my attention towards a response at this very moment, and the demi-anxiety it seeds begins to sprout and root and branch out through my hand to click onto it…I pause.]

Pause.

Yes, Pause.

And Breathe.

Breathe…

And say: Break the Manacles of the Glass and Set Me Free.

Passover Seder Quest invites all of us into this re-discovery of what Breaking the Glass towards Redemption means in 2025. In a post-LA Fires, post-inauguration, post-antisemitism-is-real, post-oh-my-Gawd-what-is-going-on-in-the-world way, Open Temple’s Seder Quest is that full mind, body, and soul workout towards catharsis that releases the inflammation of the soul caught up in modern-day spiritual slavery. We will be asked to THINK and PROBLEM SOLVE WITH OTHERS, to DANCE AS IF WE WERE NAKED AND FREE, and LOVE OURSELVES AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE OF ACCEPTING OTHERS as we Quest Through Venice in a Pilgrammation of Transformation, emerging through the parted waters to a feast where friendship and sustenance will nurture us and the final taste of the Afikomen will have never met our tongue as sweetly.

Rabbi Lori

Seder Quest 5785: Break the Glass
Passover Seder Quest at The Open Temple takes place on Sunday, April 13, 2025
Learn More and Register here. 

 

We are sitting amidst the burnt embers of civic destruction. All is vanity. Ashes from your incredible kitchen to Dust and Destruction of that backyard, where we sat for hours jumping in and out of the pool with the kids. Destruction of the corner yogurt shop where we ran into one another as our children grew taller and taller. Destruction of communities that will never again exist.

How do we respond to this depth of ruin? We dance.

The City of Santa Monica and the Third Street Promenade along with Open Temple host a Silent Disco Dance on Shushan Purim Shabbat. That’s Friday, March 14 at 6:30 pm. Find us just south of the corner of Arizona and Third Street where a Walled City will rise for a Silent Disco as we Dance in Defiance.

Yes, the Jewish response to the face of evil is dance. Revery. Joyous disruption, even if it feels contrived at first. The month of Adar is upon us, and the rabbis declare: “Our Joy MUST increase!

Our Purim story takes place in the crib of creation – Ancient Persia – a gnarly corner of today’s world. And, both then and now, we look to the Rise of Women, a divine feminine energy, for our redemption. Narges Mohammadi is our modern day Queen Esther…our dance this year is dedicated to her release from incarceration as we cultivate the Voices of Women as Voices of Reason for an Unreasonable Age.

Look to the mothers, your Chick Rabbi Calls. Look to the mothers dancing and weeping and laughing as we lick tears from our cheeks and recollect the Mayim Chayyim (cleansing waters) of the sea which is now soiled with the toxic ashes of a thousand Teslas. Look to the mothers who see ourselves in Shiri Bibas, who nursed Kfir and Ariel’s friends, and declare:

“Dear Shiri, you did not die in vain. I do not want to even imagine your end of days, yet I can’t help, as a mother, to find my mind drifting to what it was like. It was…”

And in that blank… is the Story of Purim.

Purim is a dark tale; just read Chapter 9. It invites us into the dark space of destruction and asks us, amidst the ashes of ruin, connect with a source that is not at all present in that space, but always present within if at times forgotten.

The Concept of God in the Megillat Esther is one of God’s absence. Even Esther’s name itself means “Hidden One.” And it is through our own work of sorting through the ashes, seeking what is hidden beneath the ashes: that one mezuzah, that one Hanukah menorah, that one ring with the diamond that was sewn into a hem of a coat that your great grandmother smuggled out of Auschwitz; one Hazmat suit cleaning up one home at one time, one gardener with a metal detector looking for your family’s kiddish cup so that he can continue generating an income for his family when his entire clientele was lost in one week; it is through this HOPE and DEFIANCE in the wake of devastation that we will find our way through this darkness.

So Arise! Awake! Make your bad day better. And please Dance. Dance at home, Dance-walk to your morning coffee, dance while brushing your teeth, dance with your children and partners, and dance with Open Temple.

Let’s dance our Tucheses off.
 
To Joy.
To Freedom.
To Love.
To Movement.
To Defiance.
To Life.
 
May we all rise again. May Shiri and Ariel and Kfir’s deaths be not in vain. And may our memory be of their smiles and tenderness and may our Purim Story this year awaken the Divine Goddess energy of all of  our Jewish Matriarchs, of all of the Mommas still living out of suitcases, of All of the Esthers Yet to Rise. May All of us Dance and Defy every last particle of Hatred and Evil in this world. And May each of us, in our revery, celebrate all of this amidst Orange Balloons.
 
With Resolute Love and Defiant Joy,
Rabbi Lori