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The truth is that I didn’t lose control when I became a parent. I never had control. What I had was the illusion of control, the false conviction that my blessings were earned.

My mundane—but predictable—behaviors reflect something essential about all ritual acts. They contain the chaos and shine a light on what is meaningful or poignant within.

It feels like a superpower: to know how to stop time, command presence with another being, and articulate the gift that says, “I see and love you. Keep going.”

One of the fundamental problems we post-Enlightenment, post-Holocaust, American Jews have with prayer is not theological in nature; it is that our attention is elsewhere.

Do I believe that with God’s strength I can do all things? How powerful would that be?

Rabbi Shefa Gold discussed the work of sacred Jewish chant with Ritualwell executive editor, Rabbi Deborah Glanzberg-Krainin, Ph.D. Here are highlights of their conversation:

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This year’s rare confluence of two annual celebrations, one religious and one secular, garnered much attention and sparked a huge burst of creative energy. For those of us “living in two civilizations” Thanksgivukkah was the perfect storm of a holiday. But now that the last of the pumpkin sufganiyot are gone, the sweet potato latkes with cranberry sauce have all been eaten, and the menurkeys have been put away, the post-holiday blues are starting to set in.  

Ritualwell’s executive editor, Deborah Glanzberg-Krainin, sat down to talk with rabbis Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, Ph.D., and Sue Levi Elwell, Ph.D., editors of the newly published anthology Chapters of the Heart: Jewish Women Sharing the Torah of our Lives. The following is an edited version of the conversation.   DG-K: Tell me about the genesis of this project.