Books

This new book is a deep-dive exploration of stories I’ve gathered as a religious participant-observer in the secular progressive world. It's an insider’s account of the grief that can permeate the apparent pleasures and freedoms of modern life. I’ve felt this grief among my peers and friends, in my former career as a UU minister, and in my own heart. 

The stories revolve around three intertwined types of losses: 

• Disconnection: loss of relationship with our communities and family (in Hebrew, the am). 
• Dislocation: loss of relationship with the earth (adamah). 
• Disembodiment: erosion of the knowledge of our own spirit-soaked bodies and full-bodied souls (nefesh). 

The grief we can feel at these losses is a surprising grief – even a secret despair – because it mourns the very things we once felt proud to not want or need. But it is real, nonetheless. I’ve come to hear it as a background hum, especially in the progressive circles of our day. 

But through understanding the sources of our despair, I believe we can, together, begin to reclaim pathways to more connected, grounded, spirit-filled lives and find healing for our world.

Publisher's Weekly review

 This extended midrash or spiritual reflection on the most widely known (and misunderstood) of biblical texts is a resource for both personal dignity and public engagement. When lived fully, the Ten Commandments are practices of liberation.

This book reintroduces the Ten Commandments text as a political and spiritual prescription for our time. The Commandment against stealing extends to include failure to pay fair trade price for consumer goods. The Commandment against killing includes deaths caused by environmental devastation. The prohibition on bearing false witness becomes urgent in the post-truth era of alternative facts, AI, and deepfakes.

Those who want a meaningful way to live out our spirituality and politics don’t have to invent a bunch of new practices. There is a perfectly good set of ten of them, all ready to go, that has existed for some 3000 years.