Not long ago, I got into a political argument with a friend. It was terribly frustrating, as these things generally are, and led me to wonder about how people with seemingly similar values can see things so differently, and about the polarizing, stark division that’s become so rampant, that generally gets labelled left vs. right. …
Last Friday, Jan 31, 2025, Nahum Barnea, not some fringe “influencer,” but the senior columnist in the country’s largest newspaper, wrote an opinion piece echoing something I wrote many posts ago about “no innocent bystanders,” as well as my reaction to the spectacle of the hostages’ return. Here is a translation of the relevant part: …
For some time now, I’ve been feeling like this first half of Yeats’ famous poem perfectly encapsulates where we are as a society: Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony …
I am deeply, deeply troubled by the state of our collective and individual souls. Witnessing violence without serious, subsequent ritual (or at least emotional and psychological) mending, can scar the soul. Abetting violence without serious, subsequent ritual (or at least emotional and psychological) mending, can scar the soul. Committing violence without serious, subsequent ritual (or …
The central theme of my personal work with my lineages since October 7 has been making the choice to be wielders of miracles, instead of the familiar identity of eternal victims. On the collective level, I can feel this theme throughout the lineage of the Jewish collective, which doesn’t mean that there were no miracles, …
This morning I was so pissed off I recorded a rant. First time I’ve ever done something like that, I think. And I continued to be so pissed that I transcribed it and translated it. So it’s not something I outlined ahead of time, and it doesn’t contain all the counterarguments for objections people are …
Years ago I taught basic witchcraft, but today I’m more interested in going deeper with aspects of ritual working or magical living once people have got some basics. In that context, I’m thinking about invocation, coming into communion with beings of greater spiritual power than we possess on our own. And – not exclusively, but …
This is what many Israelis say about Gaza. I’m not going to dispute it, at least not from the direction you might expect. Everyone here is still going through intense processes, seeing things that we didn’t perceive before. My process carries me in the opposite direction of most people. That’s how it usually goes with …
Altar in progress at the Ancestral Healing Intensive in Budapest, May 2024 The last political thing I wrote was not here, but on Facebook, because it was so short – was quite a while ago when I realized that Israel is not fighting to bring the hostages home, but instead of bringing them home. After …
Not long ago I read Naomi Klein’s most recent book, Doppelganger. While I didn’t agree with everything, but one insight there I found eye-opening, and it will stay with me for a long time. It is that there is a distinction between preserving the memory of traumatic events, and preserving the trauma. Again, there is …
