The Beauty Of Interfaith Marriages
Between 2010 and 2013, I co-officiated Jewish High Holyday services with a very influential 20th/21st century Rabbi, a man whose impact on how Judaism has been practiced since the Holocaust cannot be overstated. His name was Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, may his...
Marriage Licenses, Marriage Certificates, Ketubot, and Other Ritually & Symbolically Significant Marriage Contracts
You’re getting married; CONGRATULATIONS!!! You're doing so much now. You feel an extra intensity. Be careful! You might inadvertently procrastinate on getting the legal, “boring” tasks accomplished. Perhaps that's because they feel time consuming, and let's face it,...
The Significance of the Wedding Ring
Why are there wedding rings on a record album? (And by the way, what is a record album???) As far as historians can tell, people have been giving wedding rings to each other since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians; that’s 3000+ years ago! To the ancient...
Can We Embrace Our Yetzer Ha’rah? What would that look like?
What is the Yetzer Ha’rah? We first encounter this term in Gen: 6:5 – “God saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how every plan devised by his mind was nothing but evil all the time”. One of the Talmudic commentaries on this verse can be found in the Eitz...
Mitzi Schwarz Interview with the New Age Music Planet
What has driven my music is an intense desire to express the depths of who I am emotionally, and also to touch the Transcendent – that spiritual essence that is so beautiful, and that is beyond our everyday, mundane selves. I also sing because every creative act offers a way to bring Spirit onto this Earthly plane.
“Apocalypse”
The smoke from the Dixie fire was undeniable and overwhelming. On the ground in Portland and Seattle, we were confronted head on with the heart-wrenching crush of homelessness. These emotionally walloping realities spurred me to write this reflection/poem.
The Spirituality of Curiosity
I have been immersing myself in the psycho-spiritual practice of being consciously curious for close to 10 years now, and I am beginning to experience some real dividends. By this, I mean that I am recognizing that I’m approaching life from a different perspective,...
