This week, I was reading about the final stages of the plan to remove the Confederate Veterans Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. The memorial, if you’ve never seen it, is atrocious. It’s the tallest structure in the cemetery, for starters, and it’s covered with racist, apologist imagery that glorifies the Southern cause. The monument is scheduled to be removed this month, and relocated to a Virginia state park at the site of the Battle of New Market, in the Shenandoah Valley. But the pedestal will stay, to avoid disturbing the graves surrounding the monument, because four people are buried at its base, including the artist—Moses Jacob Ezekiel.

Sometimes, when I'm feeling bored in shul I flip to the back of the book, and read Pirkei Avot. There's a particular passage, in the fifth chapter, that I often find myself turning to, especially in weeks that I'm feeling old. Like this week. Because this year, and this week's Torah portion Miketz, marks 25 years since my Bar Mitzvah on December 19, 1998.

I went to graduate school at Brandeis University, and if I hadn't, I would've gone to law school at the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law, in Louisville, KY, where the first Jewish justice to sit on the Supreme Court was born, and raised. But what if I told you that story was almost wildly different. That the first Jewish nominee to sit on the bench was almost put forward almost 60 years before Brandeis was nominated, but he turned down the nomination. And thank goodness, otherwise the first Jewish justice would have resigned, to join the Confederacy.

Obadiah, Ovadiah. Obadi-ah. However you pronounce it, you might not remember it, but Obadiah is the name of the shortest book in the Hebrew Bible, and the Haftorah portion the rabbis chose to pair with this week's Torah portion, Vayishlach.

The Talmud has a lot to say about cucumbers, including a discussion about whether or not they're good for your body, even if they did grace the table of Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi. In the end, they opt for a compromise, and all of it is driven by one line in this week's Torah portion, about the pain Rebekah experiences in her womb as she carries Esau and Jacob, each the father of a great nation destined to quarrel throughout time.

There's a poem I've been reading recently, a long form epic poem originally written in Yiddish, about a Jewish blacksmith who settles down in rural Kentucky, in the mid-19th century. It's part of a project called 72 Miles, which I'm about to release, but this week I couldn't get away from a scene in the story that seems ripped from the headlines of this week's Torah portion, Chayei Sarah — The Life of Sarah.

This might be a bold statement, but there are probably few things in the world that cause people to pray more than children. We pray for their health, their safety, their growth, that they’ll find their place in this chaotic world. Even if you don’t have kids, you’re probably praying for them, and if you’re trying to have kids you’re definitely praying, and praying harder the longer you keep trying.

It took me a while, these past few weeks, overseas, In Israel, and here at home. It took a while to figure out what was going on and why I felt so strongly, feelings that seem to move, strangely, in too many directions at once.

I thought long and hard about whether or not I wanted to weigh in on the current crisis in Israel. In the end, I couldn't not, and I found myself turning as I often do to the words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Six years ago, my wife and I celebrated our auf ruf on Sukkot, and since then this holiday of joy has been connected to love for me. This year, the week leading up to Sukkot included a different kind of love, with the release of the 30th anniversary box set for one of my favorite albums of all time–Green Day’s breakthrough third album, Dookie.

If you’re interested in getting good light from your olive oil lamp, the kind of steady event light that you can say study Torah by, you’re going to need some really good olive oil. Clean. Clear. Pure. And if the light you’re lighting has extra significance, like symbolizing the presence of G-d, you need some super clean, extra clear, so pure it’s holy olive oil. Extra virgin just won’t cut it. And getting olive oil that pure, in quantities large enough for the task at hand, well that takes an entire community, which is why this weeks Torah portion opens with the commandment that the whole congregation of Israel is to bring pure olive oil, for kindling the lamps of the Tabernacle, including the light that represents the presence of G-d in the Israelite camp.

In 2008, in the middle of the night, I woke up and thought to myself, “I think the walls are shaking.” I put my glasses on and looked again, the walls were definitely shaking, but there was nothing to do, so, although I was scared, I went back to sleep. The next day all anyone could talk about was the earthquake, which was how I knew it wasn’t a dream. A 4.6 magnitude earthquake had hit the Louisville, KY area in the middle of the night, and having woken up I had somehow gone back to sleep.