As we struggle to navigate what Rabbi Rachel Ain calls this “crazy, unbalanced, unpredictable world,” both modern dilemmas and age-old questions haunt us ever more intensely:
What is our purpose?
How can we believe in God when there’s so much misery around us?
Can we really — realistically — have it all?
How should we negotiate the increasingly hostile debates tearing apart families, synagogues and the nation?
Why do the Jewish people — and Israel — matter?
The wisdom of our parents and grandparents might help guide us. And we can turn to great literature, art and prayer.
But in her first book, Watch How You Go: Jewish Wisdom for Your Journey Ahead, Rabbi Ain offers us a more complex road map, drawing from her decades as a mother, more than 20 years on the pulpit, the wisdom of Torah, Jewish history and tradition, with plenty of her favorite stories mixed in.
She joins us to discuss the impetus behind writing Watch How You Go, living on Jewish time, why she considers herself a “rabid fan” of the Jewish community and her unrelenting belief that tomorrow will be better than today.
Sponsored by The Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation Authors’ Series, honoring Theodore and Caroline Newhouse and Susan Newhouse