I founded Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives, in Brooklyn, New York, in 1993. This is an independent community that has grown from a collection of eight people around my dining room table, to 360+ members.

I joined the Institute's third rabbinic program when Kolot was ten years old.

At that time,  I felt spiritually dry.  I felt that perhaps I had done all I could to move the community forward; prayer and too many other aspects of our religious life were getting dull to me.  The Institute looked like water in the desert.

It wasn't as if I didn't have any spiritual practices in my life: Shabbat dinners at home, and Torah study with a long-time study partner gave me deep sustenance.  But it wasn't enough, so I applied to the Institute.

When my partner heard I was joining the program, she said, "You're going to be silent for four days??"  It turned out I loved the silence.  

But the practice that brought me to my edge was yoga....

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It is important, though, to conceive of this joy as more than pleasure or satisfaction, at least as commonly understood. That is, when my need or desire is met, I experience a form of joy. On the surface, that joy derives from my sense of being recognized; justified in my desires, right and good as, after all, my desires were fulfilled. 

That joy will be fleeting, as our desires will not always be fulfilled; our needs will conflict with others'; we will discover that what we wanted was not satisfying in the end. The temporary joy that comes from having our needs filled ultimately causes more suffering.

Yet, there is an aspect of having our needs filled that may not cause such suffering. It is when we can recognize that our needs are filled in every waking moment. Just to be alive is itself a miracle, a gift, even with its losses and its pain. In any given moment, we can wake up to the fact that we are conscious, that we can observe the fact of our aliveness...