Jews are obliged to throw parties and to remember. On Sukkot, we are instructed to celebrate the harvest in a particular and highly festive way. We celebrate by sharing the bounties of our labor and living in temporary structures. But our celebration is only complete when it is accompanied with full awareness of sacrifice, community, and the sheer miracle of being alive.

"This is who the Jewish people are; we carry everything we've been from the Torah till now, and this is the record of how we have done it."

It is common for many diaspora Jews in America today to not be fluent in the Hebrew language, to have ambivalence about the sacred texts, and to feel intense heartbreak at what is happening in State of Israel. These complexities can become barriers to practice, but Rabbi Ariel Stone invites you to be active in prayer and to bring those complexities of your relationship to Jewishness with you, as Jews have always done in their study and practice.

When minhagim collide! Minhag, like the siddur, is close to us. At times, it is even closer to us than halakhah, because minhag lives with us and grows with our particular community. So what happens when you encounter a minhag that is unlike your own? Does it disturb you, or does it invite you to have deeper appreciation for what you have and what others have?

"I'm convinced Jews are like bees," says Rabbi Ariel Stone. There is the instinct to travel together, even when the reason is not always clear to each individual member. In carrying a written text coming out of an oral tradition, we know there are entire stories lost. Nevertheless, there is an energy which carries the Jewish people together across space and time, through dire straits and mourning.

On his way to curse the Israelites, the future prophet Bil'am finds himself frustrated by his normally-trusty donkey and beats her. Remarkably, the donkey talks back. Even more remarkably Bil'am listens, and he internalizes a lesson about looking deeply, questioning assumptions, and being mindful of one's ignorance.

As we enter into Pride Month, consider this beautiful paradox: each person is stamped with the divine image, but each person is gloriously unique. Inversely, each person is gloriously unique, and there is also nothing new under the sun. As we carry our struggles and awareness of injustice into Pride Month, we celebrate the divinity of queer people and recall the ancestral wisdom which has long embraced them.

Can you see HaShem and live? In the history of Judaism, this question has been answered differently. Rabbi Ariel Stone asks, what if to remember your fullness is to see the face of G*d?

Marking the 75th anniversary of the modern State of Israel, Rabbi Ariel reflects on the complex relationship modern Jews have with morality, history, and social justice when we are called to engage in holiness but there is the urge to turn away.