WORDS THAT BREATHE

A year after the Borderline shooting and the SoCal fires, we reflect on the first person experiences, and explore Torah's insistence that we take action in the face of danger, including mass shootings and changes in climate.

Don't Wait: Lessons from my father-in-law Murray Novembert. (Yom Kippur sermon)

A poem about facing the moments over the High Holy Days - small but meaningful - when my dad won't be there.

A poem about those moments when I'm not feeling the sadness in the midst of the mourning.

Poem about when a friend visited me during my dad's shiva.

Standing for Kaddish that first time is surreal. This poem captures the multitude of feelings as I stood in temple to recite Kaddish for my father Ken Kipnes.

I am still a mourner. A poem about how my body - tears, trembling shoulders, welling up of emotions - remind me that I am still a mourner. Remembering my father, Ken Kipnes.

Where do I find a minyan in Disneyland when I need to say Kaddish for my father? Outside It’s a Small World, after all! There, my students ensured I had a community for Kaddish.

Low level sadness, right beneath the surface, is the constant guest in the heart and mind of the mourner. This poem reflects those feelings during shloshim for my father, Ken Kipnes, Papa.

A video that explores what it feels like to be a mourner, featuring my poem - The Secret Life of a Mourner.

A video that explores what to say to a mourner. Of particular significance for me since my father Ken Kipnes died.

A poem about my experience as a mourner following the ritual of not shaving during Shloshim.

A poem about what a mourner experiences, hidden away from the rest of the world, sometimes hidden even from friends or community members

A poem about the challenges of finding poetry (and meaning I can hold onto) during shloshim for my father

A poem about that first day after shiva, when a mourner walks into a room of people for the first time. About my experience mourning Papa (my father Ken Kipnes).

A poem written on a Jetblue flight carrying me home from my father's funeral. Flying as a metaphor...

Spoken word poetry about a rabbi who now has to be the one who sits shiva and let's other take care of him.

Spoken word poetry about seeing Dad in the mirror, and seeing dad within me.

A mantra that I repeated again and again when I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that my father had in fact died.

A spoken word poem about a rabbi who realizes that after all the pastoral support for people whose loved ones have died, he never really knew what it felt like. Until his own father died.