essays on contemplative practice from Zeek Magazine

Getting Serious About a Religion of Love
Zeek, April 2007

Keep Your Godwrestling, Thanks: The Use and Limits of Jewish Theology
Zeek, March 2007

Stop Seeking: Paradoxes of the Spiritual Path
Zeek, February 2007

Religion and Insanity
Zeek, December 2006

Kashrut and Nonduality
Zeek, November 2006

Yom Kippur and Nonduality
What is the meaning of repentance, if everything is God? (October, 2006)

Spirituality in a Time of Seriousness
On the levels of religion (August, 2006)

My Journey to Flexidoxy
At home on the slippery slope (July, 2006)

Fear of Fun
Sexuality, religion, politics: the fear of fun (June, 2006)

The Freedom of Being
Shabbat and Nonduality (April, 2006)

Flakes
Why are so many spiritual people unreliable and self-involved? (March, 2006)

Christmas in Jerusalem
Zionism and spirituality (January, 2006)

Hitler and God
Evil and nonduality (December, 2005)

Fresh Baked Bread
Ideas about the thing, and the thing itself (November, 2005)

Fetishizing the Trigger
Fundamentalism and spiritual experience (October, 2005)

Guilt and Groundedness
On religious impulses and guilt (September, 2005)

Does Mysticism Prove the Existence of God?
What we can and cannot learn from contemplative practice (July, 2005)

Star Wars, George Bush, Judaism, and the Penis
Toughness, good and evil, paganism and Judaism (June, 2005)

When Dialogue Harms
When engaged conversation can harm spiritual practice (May, 2005)

Discipline
Hedgehogs, foxes, and spiritual practice (April, 2005)

Shakey: An Essay on Anger
March, 2005

I Still Believe that People are Good at Heart
On the anthropology of contemplative practice (February, 2005)

Am I Religious?
November, 2004

What the World is and What to Do About It
The nature of Being, and how to experience it.

Passion and Violence
On the Mel Gibson film and the passions of religion (March, 2004)

Three Jewish Books on Sadness
A bereaved mother, a rabbi, and a therapist look at dark emotions (December, 2004)

Hasidism and Homoeroticism
July, 2004

How I Finally Learned to Accept Christ in my Heart
Making peace with Jesus (June, 2004)
(Note: the title of this essay has aroused controversy in some circles.
If you find it disturbs you, please read the essay before making up your mind.)

You are God in Drag
Notes from and after retreat (February, 2004)

Thinking Despite Doubt, Feeling Despite Truth
Between contemplation and affirmation (January, 2004)

Energy
What is 'energy'? Is it nonsense? (November, 2003)

The Art of Enlightenment
James Turrell and the truth of light (April, 2003)

Run Like the Wind
Running, spirituality, and Running the Spiritual Path (With Dan Friedman, December, 2003)

Quality of Life
What my grandmother's suffering teaches

Loneliness and Faith
The interrelationship between loneliness and religious experience.

The Ghost and the Machine
Why is it easier to see God in nature than in the city?

divrei torah

On Parshat Bereshit

On Parshat Shmot

On Parshat Va'era

On Parshat Tazria-Metzora

On Parshat Tazria-Metzora (II)

On Parshat Va'Etchanan

ahavat olam: judaism and sexual orientation

How can you be gay and Jewish?
Starting from square one: How to be both out and proud, and religiously Jewish.

Ahavat Olam
Speech given at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America on Conservative Judaism and sexual orientation, focusing on Jay's own suffering in the closet, and arguing that the Jewish God could not possibly create gay people only to subject them to repression.

It's the Purity, Stupid: Reading Leviticus in Context
Why God hates fags only as much as God hates shrimp.

Toward a Queer Jewish Theology
Why does God make some people gay?

Conservative Judaism: Good for the Gays?
Tikkun, March/April 2007 (not yet online)

Gay History in the Making, I Guess
MyJewishLearning.com, Dec. 7, 2006

Response to the Roth Tshuvah
Long, legal response to the leading opinion in the conservative movement that forbids homosexual activity.

Homosexuality, Judaism, and Guilt
Trusting, and not trusting, one's conscience

The Virtues of Dialogue
Jay Michaelson interview gay orthodox Rabbi Steve Greenberg

Disabuse Community of Intolerance
Sex scandals, repression, and the closet

Thirteen principles of queering Jewish theology
Rereading Maimonides' thirteen principles of faith

Da'at
Essay on the homoerotics of learning, teaching, and knowledge.

excerpts from longer works

God in Your Body: Kabbalah, Mindfulness, and Embodied Spiritual Practice
Published by Jewish Lights Publishing in January, 2007

LearnKabbalah.com
An online introduction to Kabbalah.

Introduction to Sitting with God: Meditation, Theology, and the Bible's Most Powerful Psalm
Contemplative practices based on close readings of the Ashrei prayer.

Introduction to The Gate of Sadness: Enlightenment and the Broken Heart
Nonduality and ordinary sadness.

other writings on spirituality and contemplative practice

No Crystals Needed: Why Meditation is not Spirituality
Forward, May 4, 2007

Leonard Cohen: Poet of the Holy Sinners
Forward, April 20, 2007

YHVH Means What Is: Integrating Judaism and Buddhism, and Why I Bother
Ashe, Winter 2007 (guest editor of journal)

Judaism, Meditation, and the B-Word
Forward, June 2005

A Theory of Everything: Understanding God, Love, and Franz Rosenzweig
Forward, May 2005

An Awakened Soul: The Lives and Lessons of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
Forward, May 2005

The Buddha from Brooklyn (Lama Surya Das)
Forward, November 2004

Sacred Sexuality: Promises and Perils
White Crane Journal, Fall 2004

Mystery Sells: What the Kabbalah Centre actually teaches
Forward, September 2004

Tales of the Masters: Two new books on neo-Hasidism
Forward, July 2004

Purim: Revealing Ourselves through our Masks
Forward, March 2004

Chanukah: A Festival of Rebellion Reminds us What Matters Most
Forward, December 2003

graduate school papers

Hasidism and Nature: Between Negation and Affirmation
Short research paper on models of the man-nature-God relation in Hasidism, focusing on the circle of the Besht, the Tanya, and Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav. (15 pages, 1998)

The Psychological Serpent: Dualism and Evil in R. Nachman of Bratzlav
Seminar paper analyzing the psychologization of mythological evil in the writings of Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav in the context of R. Nachman's dualistic worldview. (15 pages, 1998)

Paths to the Divine: Ecstasy and Theology in R. Dov Baer of Lubavitch
Seminar paper on contemplation, ecstasy, and pantheism.

Knowledge, Torah, and Ultimacy in the Meor Einayim
On the infinity of God and experience of God in the homily of R. Menahem Nahum of Chernobyl, Meor Einayim (The Light of the Eyes). (32 pages, 1994)

Existence in the Tanya
Research paper on the categories of 'yesh' and 'ayin,' in the Tanya, the masterwork of the founder of Chabad Hasidism, R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi. (28 pages; 1994)

Saadia Gaon's kavod nivra and its place in his Philosophy of Judaism
Research paper on the subject of the "kavod," the 'glory' of God which Saadia Gaon, medieval Jewish philosopher/theologian/rabbi, reinterprets as being a created entity which mediates between God's revelation and the world. (25 pages, 1993)

What is God?
Maimonides on God, in the Guide to the Perplexed, his philosophical masterpiece. (20 pages, 1994)

Particularity by any other Name: Rosenzweig and the Postmodern
Essay proposing that noted Jewish post-Hegelian philosopher Franz Rosenzweig be considered as an early postmodern thinker with specifically Jewish and specifically postmodern concerns with surface, particularity, and infinity, in The Star of Redemption.  (13 pages, 1998)

Derrida and Nonsense Theology
Derridian (a)theology and gnostic-driven 'nonsense theology,' which may avoid logocentrism and ontotheology by negating both 'traditional' theological predicates and the suspect hyperpredicates of ordinary negative theology. (30 pages, 1996)

The Anxiety of Influence: Philosophical Questions and Kabbalistic Answers
Seminar paper discussing how Kabbalah adapts Jewish mysticism not to the substantive doctrines of rationalist philosophy but to the philosophical orientation towards Judaism as a system with both "surface" and "depth," "letter" and "spirit."  (25 pages, 1998)

Resisting Dualism: The Philosophical and Hermeneutical Arguments of Irenaeus
Seminar paper analyzing the retreat into anthropological and ontological monism in Irenaeus's Against Heresy, together with the hermeneutical polemics against gnostic dualism.  (21 pages, 1998)

Dualism and its Perils: The Case of Mendelssohn
Investigation into whether the Enlightenment project of Moses Mendelssohn and the early reforms of the Westphalia constitory were "responsible" for Reform Judaism. (15 pages, 1998)

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