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Beloved reader, I am redoing the rotb.org website.  Again. Why am I redoing the website again? Because a website older than (blank) years is (blank

An apple, a banana, and a baseball cap.🍎🍌🧢 ✧✧✧  I arrive at the wedding venue super early. My preference, always, is to arrive early, find

A few weeks ago, in writing to you about the High Holy Day services, I referenced stopping the telling the story of the fish-dwelling prophet,

Text Late May 2020, and I’m talking to Phil, my beloved father-in-law. I’ve returned home from yet another protest that “Black Lives Matter” — and

Ten minutes before I begin leading High Holy Days services, a large dog leaps up and takes a softball-sized bite from the bottom of the

✧✧✧ Vignette #1 “I’m afraid I won’t be able to get through them,” the future bride says laughing, bu tearfully. I’m crafting a bespoke marriage

  Note: Setting boundaries is like painting a room. Before you actually start painting—which is, relatively, the easy part—there is a lot of prep work. 

“I must be a bad person,” my friend J tells me. I called J just as I started my mid-day dog walk. He continues, “Maybe

Hi. It’s me. Brian. Rabbi Brian. Writing to you, beloved. How are you?What’s going on?How’s life? Me?Getting used to having a house without my son.

  4:1 Rule — It’s not easy. But it’s doable. And, worthwhile.     I hear the canister signaling that the process of carbonation is complete

  5:6 WHERE LOVE MEETS US   One day, after swearing me to secrecy, a friend, stammering and sheepish, admitted she was experimenting with wearing

  I know better.   I know better.
   But I made a mistake.   I wish I had known better at the time.  

Portland, Oregon  Winter, 2012   Emmett, age five, is in the backseat, and I’m driving.   We approach a red light, where there’s a man

Sometimes the pain is too much to feel—and that’s okay, too.   I’m in a quandary. Jane is weeping hard, her head pressed to my

The exercise of writing 40 articles a year helps with keeping me in practice. Practiced at writing. And also at forgiveness. Because it’s simply not