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What if death is not the end, birth is not the beginning, and Earth is not our only home? Humanity has survived extraordinary revolutions in what we believe to be true. We discovered that Earth is not the center of the universe. That the stars are distant suns. That time itself is not absolute. Each discovery shattered something we once considered certain. But imagine a discovery that changes not merely our understanding of the universe, but our understanding of who we are, w

As antisemitism spreads across the globe, one teacher’s classroom reminds us why truth, memory, and moral courage matter more than ever. My son Max teaches at a public high school in Florida. This year, he is teaching Holocaust Studies to a classroom of students, none of whom are Jewish. As his father, I cannot begin to express how proud I am of him. Not simply because he is a teacher, a profession I deeply respect. Not simply because he is helping young people understand one

The Soul’s Journey After Death The last thing he remembered was someone saying his name. It was a woman’s voice, familiar and frightened, calling to him from beside the bed. He could feel her hand holding his, and he wanted to tighten his fingers around hers, to let her know that he could still hear. There were things he had intended to tell her. An apology he had postponed. A small confession he had carried for years. The simple assurance that she had given him more happines

On fear, courage, and the astonishing return of tomorrow. We usually think of a near-death experience as something mystical. A tunnel. A light. A feeling of leaving the body. The presence of someone long gone. A glimpse of something beyond this life. But perhaps there is another kind. Not an experience of what may lie beyond death. An experience of standing so close to death that life itself suddenly becomes visible. That is what I keep thinking about when I think of the pass

A Reflection on the Soul’s Journey Before there was a name, there was a light. It existed in the Field of Consciousness, where no horizon marked an ending and no distance separated one soul from another. The Creator was not somewhere beyond this place. The Creator was the infinite field itself—the source of all consciousness, the presence from which awareness arose and within which every soul existed. Within that vastness were countless pinpoints of light. Each pinpoint was a

What Shelters Us in the Wilderness Now Clouds of Glory There are moments when an ancient story reaches across thousands of years and suddenly feels as though it was meant for this moment. That happened to me at a Sukkot dinner with friends. Our delightful hostess read We Are All Sukkah-Dwellers, a reflection by Rabbi Eliezer B. Diamond of the Jewish Theological Seminary. In it, I encountered something I had never heard of before: the Clouds of Glory — the Ananei HaKavod. Rabb

Where does the music come from? Like most of us, I assumed consciousness came from the brain. The equation seemed simple enough. Build a sufficiently complex nervous system, add billions of neurons, connect them through trillions of synapses, and somewhere within that astonishing electrical machinery the experience of being you somehow appears. Science still does not know exactly how that happens. We can watch neurons fire. We can map networks in the brain. We can observe wha

Mindfulness teaches us to return to the present. But what if meditation could also teach us how to leave it? I have been experimenting with a different kind of practice—one that does not treat memory or imagination as distractions. Instead of focusing only on the breath, a mantra, or the immediate moment, I allow consciousness to move deliberately through time. I begin in the present. Then I visit a happy memory. Not to become lost in nostalgia, but to reenter a moment of lov

When “Be Here Now” Asks Too Little of Consciousness Mindfulness has become a central spiritual practice of our time. Be present. Stay in the moment. Return to the breath. Don't get lost in the past. Do not become consumed by the future. There is wisdom in this. Anyone trapped in regret knows how merciless the past can become. Anyone who has lived with anxiety knows how frightening the future can seem. The present can be a refuge. A breath can become an anchor. The body can re