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All articles

- notes on the creative process

- Be in my next book!

- on this the world endures

- the queen's somatic map

- on the other trafficked girls in Esther

- Moral Injury

- Ask the Community Time!

- The Love Psalm Hypothesis

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | MAR 12, 2026, 9:30 AM EDT

notes on the creative process

stuff I've figured out over 3 1/2 decades of writing

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an everybody-celebrating, justice-centered voyage into ancient stories that can illuminate our own lives. It‘s run on a nonprofit, so it’s 100% NAZI FREE. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here:

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During these days of pain and fury, having an outlet is crucially important. For some people, that's a spiritual practice, or therapy, or moving your body in an intentional way, or any one of a million other things. For some of us, it's creative work.

For a lot of reasons, I've been deep in the weeds of my own creative process recently. I thought this might be a good time to share some things that I've figured out over the last– oh, thirty-five years of doing this? Maybe some of these are obvious to you, maybe some of these are useful, maybe some are just interesting peeks into someone else's weird brain, what do I know.

But here are some of my favorite tips and tricks:

1. Something I discovered recently: If you, like I do, have a beloved band with a deep repertoire that, at this late date, has released (now with streaming and everything) a lot of their B-sides, demos, rare tracks, etc.– it can be interesting to make your streaming service play you a bunch of that stuff while you work. Why? Because if you're familiar with their polished album oeuvre, hearing their– you'll pardon my Anne Lamott– shitty first drafts and their songs that weren't good enough to make it to the albums you know by heart is, I don't know, weirdly heartening as you, the artist, are busy trying to create.

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/notes-on-the-creative-process/ on Mar 13, 2026 at 8:35 AM EDT.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | MAR 9, 2026, 2:18 PM EDT

Be in my next book!

build community and win coolness!!

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an everybody-celebrating, justice-centered voyage into ancient stories that can illuminate our own lives. It‘s run on a nonprofit, so it’s 100% NAZI FREE. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here:

Life is a Sacred Text is always independent, nonprofit — and most of all community-driven. It's your thoughtful engagement with, and sharing of this work, that makes it possible to co-create something better out there.

As we enter five years of offering wisdom, fortification, and changemaking strategy, we need your help building this movement— and we’ve got a scheme we think you’ll be into. If you've already been sharing this work, want to continue building community, and/or just love a healthy competition, then it's time to get rewarded. ❤️ 🌱

There are a few other people who work on Team LiST at this point, but so often it's still just me and this machine. (And yes, that's a post coming soon about which I am very much excite ok)

You make Life of a Sacred Text a community—a movement.

Why this matters:

(1) When I left Substack – that Nazi-tolerating, Elon-sycophantic for-profit machine for a nonprofit host– at the same time that I made this my full-time work– I knew I'd be taking a significant hit, since Substack's author infrastructure is far, far superior (unsurprising, given that they have 30 x more employees.)

But here, we strive to walk the walk, and align our actions with our values, and not supporting Nazis is a value.

So when I say we can’t be anything without this community– without you– I mean it. We literally cannot do this work without you, and your support, as readers. We grow off the algorithm, because of your willingness to share the work.

(2) This program is both a thank you and a let’s keep going, please little nudge. We need you now more that ever.

How it works:

1) Copy and share your referral link far and wide 🔗

To help spread the word about Life is a Sacred Text, copy and share your unique link below with anyone you know who needs nourishment, truth and hope.

Share it on social media, in your chat groups, on listservs, anywhere and everywhere. (You have to be logged in for your unique referral link to work. Click the button at the top of the page after you click that says "Log in" and make an account if necessary.)

2) Your people sign up for Life is a Sacred Text 🌱

When your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, etc. join this community of folks who care about serious questions and the better world we can build, we count your referrals toward your rewards! (And yes, they can sign up for the free tier or get more in the House of Study..!)

3) Win fabulous prizes! 📚 ✨

The top winner each month – the person who refers the most subscribers, whether free or paid– will get thanked in my next real actual print book!

AND every week or two I'll send out swag (as well as the occasional signed book...) in unabashed Chaos Muppet style to folks who are killing it on the word-spreading game, as a thank you.

4) You help us grow 🌳

More people in this community. More liberatory wisdom, fortification, and strategy become possible to help us meet the moment this year, and years to come!

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Questions? life@lifeisasacredtext.com.

Sending so many blessings your way, and so much gratitude.

xoxoxox

RDR 🌱❤️

PS. Really. Thank you.

(Yes, actually):

Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters

Exclusive: Site takes a cut of subscriptions to content that promotes far-right ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism

The GuardianGeraldine McKelvie

Substack’s Algorithm Accidentally Reveals What We Already Knew: It’s The Nazi Bar Now

Back in April 2023, when Substack CEO Chris Best refused to answer basic questions about whether his platform would allow racist content, I noted that his evasiveness was essentially hanging out a …

TechdirtMike Masnick

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And as always, cost shouldn't be a barrier to Torah. If paying isn't for you right now; life@lifeisasacredtext.com and we'll hook you up.

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/wanna-be-in-my-next-book-2/ on Mar 13, 2026 at 8:36 AM EDT.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | MAR 5, 2026, 9:30 AM EST

on this the world endures

sources on making war and peace

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an everybody-celebrating, justice-centered voyage into ancient stories that can illuminate our own lives. It‘s run on a nonprofit, so it’s 100% NAZI FREE. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here:

Once again, we open the news and bombs are dropping.

Good people in many places are cowering, trying to stay safe.

The damage is beginning to pile up.

How are you doing? How is your heart?

This is a place for us to talk about this stuff.

Let's try something different.

I'm going to start with some questions, which maybe you can try to answer by jotting down your answer on a piece of paper (tree or digital) before you get to the sources on Judaism, war, peace, and more that you'll see below. And then maybe you'll see how the same questions land after visiting the texts?

I'd love to hear how this is for you.

War is:

Engaging in war is:

Civilian casualties in war are:

Preemptive military action is:

Alternatives to war include:

The relationship between personal ethics and war ethics is:

The person or people who should decide on the ethics of war is/are:

My heart right now is:

Here are some sources with which to engage around war that might be surprising, given, well, what we so often see on the ground.

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/wart/ on Mar 13, 2026 at 8:35 AM EDT.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | FEB 26, 2026, 9:30 AM EST

the queen's somatic map

exclusive guest excerpt!! AND! BONUS post inside this post!

Happy Purim, House of Study! (Almost!)

For those of you new to this TV channel, the holiday of Purim is coming up, in which we read the Book of Esther.

First, the Talmud teaches that

"when Adar enters, joy increases."

And the Ramones teach,

"Bam, bam, ba-bam, ba-bam, bam, ba-bam."

As such, please enjoy my friends Yudi and the 50 Gates:

(BTW unplugged, Yudi+'s sound is Breslover alt-folk, and with the full band and amps it's very The Torah of Hüsker Dü.)

NEXT! I am delighted to share with you a very exclusive excerpt of an exciting new book coming out, called Esther Keeps The Score by the wonderful Dr. Alexiana Fry giving you an absolutely brilliant new way of seeing Queen Esther (and her take on the "why" of the horrific violence at the end of the Book is – like this whole thing – a whole set of doorways in.)

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Esther Keeps the Score: Trauma, Body, and Politics in the Hebrew Bible cover

There is also my take on some of the ways that this Book echoes all too presciently with the news of our day, most particularly the Epstein-related news. It's there if you want to go there. Here, and at the bottom of the post.

But regardless! This is good stuff! And we will return to our regularly scheduled text study-type posts next week. (In the meantime, please always tell me what you like and don't like and want more of, ya?)

Adapted Excerpt of Esther Keeps the Score: Trauma, Body and Politics in the Hebrew Bible by Dr. Alexiana Fry

trigger warning: This is about trauma and the 'fawn' response

“We tend to forget the incredible violence enacted upon Esther because she comes to the rescue of the Jews so her sacrifice seems worth it.” – Cat Zavis

As we prepare for Ta’anit Esther and Purim, I am thinking about trauma afresh.

The book of Esther is about the survival of the Jews despite all odds, and this is achieved through the actions of Esther, who embodies what seems to be every sort of precarity. However, with a trauma-informed lens, we might better understand her actions—both those we see as questionable and those we see as masterfully strategic—as an actual trauma response: fawn.

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/the-queens-somatic-map/ on Mar 13, 2026 at 8:35 AM EDT.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | FEB 26, 2026, 2:28 AM EST

on the other trafficked girls in Esther

because the girls in the harem matter, too

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an everybody-celebrating, justice-centered voyage into ancient stories that can illuminate our own lives. It‘s run on a nonprofit, so it’s 100% NAZI FREE. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here:

big trigger warnings for sexual violence, friends (CSA)

And yes, this story resonates today in ways I wish it didn't.

Yes, we're talking about Epstein-related matters here.

But we've seen what happens when we don't face the truth about things that matter.

So let's keep telling the truth so we can make a new, more whole tomorrow.

You may know that the story of the Book of Esther begins with King Ahasueres deposing his wife Vashti because she won't subject herself to a huge party full of drunken men. Yep.

So yeah, after Ahasuerus deposes Vashti for not coming to his drunken bacchanal ("and the rule for the drinking was, 'no restrictions!'" says the text), one can only assume for her own safety because "showing off her beauty" to a room full of hammered men, each of whose every wish have been complied with by the palace stewards (1:8) might not feel safe– he needs a new queen. (All these verses will be from chs 1 and 2):

The king’s servants who attended him said, “Let beautiful young virgins be sought out for Your Majesty. Let Your Majesty appoint deputies in every province of your realm to assemble all the beautiful young virgins at the fortress Shushan, in the harem under the supervision of Hege, the king’s eunuch, guardian of the women. Let them be provided with their cosmetics. And let the girl who pleases Your Majesty be queen instead of Vashti.” The proposal pleased the king, and he acted upon it.

First of all, yeah, they did say "beautiful young virgins" twice in two verses, you're not making that up. Naarah specifically has the connotations of youth. How young? Rabbinics define this as pubescent. Before she has reached full physical maturity. A child.

(As tempted as I am to fall down the "exactly which scholars think the Book of Esther was written in what time period and what exactly do we know about what that word meant in that culture exactly then" rabbit hole– and you know I CAN – I am not gonna.)

"Every province"

Ahasuerus... reigned over a hundred and twenty-seven provinces from India to Kush.

Kush, you may remember, is Sudan.

It's generally believed that the character of Ahasuerus is based on the historical Xerxes I, the grandson of Cyrus the Great. (That timeline would track, too, Xerxes was crowned in 486 BCE. Mordechai, the Book says, is the great-grandson of someone who was exiled by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, and here he's old enough to be a parent figure to the fully-ish grown Esther).

This would be a map of Xerxes' empire– which, wouldn't you know it, Sudan to India, right there.

Map of the eastern Atlantic through the middle of India. The area spanning Libya, Egypt, northern Sudan, up through Israel/Palestine and Syria, Lebanon up through Turkey, around the top of Arabia, Armenia, into what's now Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and a little into India-- is all colored bright purple. That's Xerxes' empire.

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(Obviously white supremacy wasn't a thing then and their construction of race would be very different from ours, but when they say "all the beautiful young virgins" from every province? I want you to picture a lot of girls who are a lot of different shades of Black and Brown. Not, you know, this.) (Needless to say.)

All of them are captured by agents of the State— "deputies" – to take these girls from their families and get them to travel sometimes exceedingly far distances so that the king can decide if they "please" him.

In the harem, all the girls are rubbed for six months with oil of myrrh as part of preparations for an intimate meeting with the king. Myrrh was a known contraception in the ancient Mediterranean, understood to prevent the implantation of fertilized eggs, similar to some modern contraceptives.

(The other spices may also have been used in service of pregnancy prevention as well.)

None of these girls give consent to this, just as Epstein's victims and survivors don't truly consent to the medical treatments – including contraception and medication to keep them fuzzy and dull their consent– forced on them, either.

SisterSong: Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective defines Reproductive Justice as

“the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.”

None of the girls (and women, if we include Vashti, of unknown age) in this story have true bodily autonomy.

T his is the text that we have. Even as we still in many places celebrate this holiday by having girls dress for a "beauty contest" for a man in power and call it adorable. Is it time that we're more careful with our children of all genders and these paradigms?

(I'm not saying we shouldn't seek kids' appropriate version of all the tales! But I AM saying that all kids of all genders should read this wonderful book):

Queen Vashti’s Comfy Pants

If you remember learning about Purim as a child and wondering why Vashti was a villain, here is the book for you—and for children now fortunate enough to enjoy a new interpretation of the feisty Pe

Jewish Book CouncilHidden Heroine: Queen Esther in Children’s Books

And yes, our girl Esther was trafficked, too.

When the king’s order and edict was proclaimed, and when many young girls were assembled in the fortress Shushan under the supervision of Hegai, Esther too was taken into the king’s palace.

We don't know the names of any of the other girls. There aren't any midrashim on them, either, not as far as I know. I have been looking for them– in 2023, my then-lieutenant on organizing Jewish clergy around abortion activism (the always-wonderful now-Rabbi) Naima Hirsch Gelman and I did some work on this, and couldn't find anything. The Rabbis love to drash on everything. Anything! Every detail, every character. And there are an entire literal harem of empire of girls here about whom they evince zero evident curiosity.

But yes, this is a story about the trafficking of girls by men in power.

And once Esther is chosen, we literally never hear about them again.

But in my midrashic imagination, there is another possibility.

Esther 9:29 tells us that Queen Esther, daughter of Abihail wrote, with the full authority of the Crown, to the whole Empire. With words of "truth and peace."

In my midrashic imagination, she didn't just speak truth for her own people and peace for her own people.

In my midrashic imagination, she was chosen quickly and used her power to protect all these other girls.

She got access to the quill and was able to keep them safe.

She was able to use royal treasury funds to send anyone home who wished to, and to keep anyone at the palace who wished to.

She used the money and power she had access to not to undo, but to transform. And to create a new future moving forward for the girls who had already been harmed.

She could do nothing, or she could do something. So in my midrashic imagination, some of what Esther wrote was for, and about, and in solidarity with, and centering, them.

What future will we write, here?

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This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/esthertrafficking/ on Mar 13, 2026 at 8:36 AM EDT.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | FEB 24, 2026, 12:30 PM EST

Moral Injury

Or: Why We Need The Prophets Now, More Than Ever

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an everybody-celebrating, justice-centered voyage into ancient stories that can illuminate our own lives. It‘s run on a nonprofit, so it’s 100% NAZI FREE. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here:

Life is a Sacred Text is finally entering our Prophets Era.

It will be, as I've intimated, a bit meandering, non-linear, but I want to introduce some overarching ideas that I'm hoping will inform this whole next epoch of this project, and our work together.

And at the same time, I'll share a much newer framework that can illuminate so much of our individual and collective harm now, and, I think, drive home the need to ground and reground in these ancient texts.

Let's talk about moral injury. And the prophets.

Prophets were found throughout the cultures of the Ancient Near East. They were typically either based at the local temples and/or hired by their local kings, and more or less told those kings what they wanted to hear: You should go to war, you shouldn't go to war, and so forth.

While some biblical prophets did have features of these sorts, there were other features that seem to be more or less distinctive to The Prophets Of The Bible™️, insofar as we know. (We'll get there.)

The word for prophet in Hebrew is navi– literally, "one who has been called." They were originally known as "seers," and their domain covered dreams and divination as well as serving as the sacred telecom center.

Thus said the Sovereign God... You partake of the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, and you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not tend the flock. You have not sustained the weak, healed the sick, or bandaged the injured; you have not brought back the strayed, or looked for the lost; but you have driven them with harsh rigor.... (Ezekiel 34:2-4)

That is, the prophet was literally the intermediary between the divine and the people, often passing on messages from the former to the latter. This included (now we're talking biblical prophets) advocating for God's vision– of what must be –to the people (sometimes / often, to those with power) and sometimes advocating on behalf of people to the divine, to Ultimate Power.

And prophets were always engaged with the events of their contemporary moment.

The Hebrew prophets that we know about were, for the most part, independent. It's not a coincidence that their stories and teachings are so often populated with stories about – and words on behalf of – those struggling to get by. When you read the prophets, you see, again and again, widows, people who are sick, and those affected by famine and oppression. When there are miracles from God– for, sometimes they are miracle workers– the people who are on the receiving end aren't wealthy. This isn't a coincidence. It's a statement of priority and value.

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan... Who defraud those who are impoverished, who rob those in need...my Sovereign God swears irrevocably: behold, days are coming upon you when you will be carried off in baskets.... (Amos 4:1-2)

They had a lot to say about the Temple and other official systems and structures that guided daily life. They weren't opposed to them as a rule, but they put ethics and morality at the forefront. And in all the places where ethics and morality clashed with official matters, there wasn't a question about what would win:

Care for human beings, always. Justice. Righteousness. Kindness. Integrity.

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These were real human people. This is an 8th c. BCE seal that was found only a few years ago that actually says, in Paleo-Hebrew, "Belonging to Isaiah the prophet." (well, it almost certainly says 'prophet', the last letter is slightly damaged but certainly seems to be spelling that.) And what's more, it was found only 10 feet away from a seal that was inscribed "Of King Hezekiah of Judah," aka the guy with whom the prophet Isaiah is often found in relationship in biblical texts. It's an incredible find, a mind-bending probable confirmation of events, or at least figures, described in the Hebrew Bible. Also, Hezekiah's seal is pretty cool looking, definitely validation for a new generation of ankh-wearing Jewish goths. (Image of an ancient clay seal/bulla in Paleo-Hebrew, broken at the top and partly worn away.)

These seem like far-away concepts now, don't they? The Syracuse Moral Injury Project defines moral injury as

the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one’s own moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct.

[This includes] the lasting emotional, psychological, social, behavioral, and spiritual impacts of actions that violate a [person's] core moral values and behavioral expectations of self or others.

The term itself is believed to have come through the writings of Vietnam War veteran and peace activist Camillo “Mac” Bica and psychiatrist Jonathan Shay in the wake of warzone trauma. As the prophets themselves indicate, this is an ancient problem– now articulated in the language of our day.

Moral injury has been described as a "deep soul wound," and that people in authority failing to do what's right is a particularly egregious contributor to it.

One study summarizes the kinds of situations that have shown to result in moral injury:

1) Acting (or failing to act) in ways that violated one's own moral code or values

2) Feeling betrayed by leaders or colleagues who one once trusted

3) Seeing/witnessing things that were morally wrong

.... You might see where I'm going with this, don't you?

In these days of horror and genocide, these days in which leaders and institutions of trust all too often choose cowardice or cruelty, complicity with white supremacy and the persecution of marginalized communities–

... in which too many people experience their own communities under attack, watch those on whom they had depended fail to step up, or just don't believe that anyone has their back and sides–

... in which always-fragile policies protecting people from discrimination and harassment have been jettisoned in many spheres, leaving even more people open to and experiencing harms (while others are forced to make hard choices about complicity) –

... in which we are still learning about how many people have, and continue to, cover for powerful leaders who sexually assault(ed?) stolen girls (children) for their own entertainment–

... in which more people are struggling to get by because of the actions of those in power.

In which, on the off-chance that we or those we love are not personally impacted, we carry devices everywhere from which we can bear witness these harms to those who are sick, hungry, and subjugated.

If you do not oppress not the immigrant, the fatherless, and the widow, and do not shed blood in this place or walk after other gods to your own detriment, then will I cause you to dwell in this place... for ever and ever. (Jeremiah 7:6-7)

Certainly, not all moral injury is the same. Those on the front lines of war experience things that someone feeling fear and empathy on their phone does not. As does a healthcare worker forced to make unjust decisions about human life because of the brutalities of a for-profit and/or under-resourced system; those who experienced betrayal by "institutions of trust," and so forth. (On the more significant end of the spectrum, it's been formally recognized as a mental health condition.)

But I wonder if we're not all living in a culture of moral distress and injury, and if it might not help to at least begin to name this.

Someone named Wesley Fleming created the Moral Injury Experience Wheel to help people identify their feelings:

(A wheel with four quadrants. The top left quadrant is red, and is marked "ANGER, Betrayal by Legit authority" In this quadrant are the words: Rage Vengeful Resentful Contempt/Disgust Disillusioned/cynical Mistrustful Disappointed Helpless Disbelief. The top right quadrant is blue and labeled "GUILT/SHAME, personal transgression" and includes the words Specific guilt Regret Remorse / Humiliated Self-contempt Self-loathing Self-disgust Shame. The bottom left quadrant is green and labelled "DISGUST Witnessing excessive violence, death, immoral acts" and includes the words, Outrage Indignation Rage non-Specific-guilt Sorrow/sadness Abhorrent Nauseated/Sickened Revolted/Repugnant Appalled/Disgusted Helpless/Overwhelmed HorrifiedHorrified. The bottom right quadrant is yellow, is labelled, "DISORIENTED, Unavoidable irresolvable moral conflict" and includes the words, Helpless/Powerless Confused/Uncertain Perplexed Futility Non-specific guilt/Failure Disillusioned/Cynical Apathetic Surreal/Meaningless/Absurd Hopeless/Despair Global resentment/Bitter Tragic remorse Lost Empty.)

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There are a lot of different treatments being suggested for moral injury, but the patterns I've observed after looking over a bunch of them seems to be– and none of these are that surprising, really:

1) Articulating the harm

2) Talking about it with others– both trained professionals as well as others who've gone through the same thing– and having your experiences witnessed non-judgmentally and validated

3) The work of – yep – repentance and repair. That may include accountability work, self-compassion, forgiving others (or choosing not to), and more.

4) Work on rebuilding one's own sense of values and integrity, including taking actions towards living those values. (This is honestly very much part of the repair work.) Finding ways to help others is listed as a key component.

5) Being in healthy community is important, too.

(Depending on the harm, trauma therapies like EMDR, exposure therapy and CBT are sometimes used as well.)

The teachings of the prophets arose in times of great moral harm and danger.

Your rulers are rogues and cronies of thieves; every one avid for presents and greedy for gifts. They do not judge the case of the orphan, and the widow’s cause never reaches them. (Isaiah 1:23)

And they are, I believe, absolutely essential tools to us now, in this era of moral distress and injury– guidelights out of the fog of relativism, out of a haze that follows money and power wherever it shall lead, that has lost any reverence for the sanctity of life and honor for the dignity of our fellow human.

The prophets promoted both self-criticism and hope: Their message was, again and again: You can and must do better.  Justice will prevail.

And, yes– however we might think of it today, their message was, often: God’s hand is in history, and in the long run, God will support the good and undermine the bad. And nevertheless! We have a role to play. We must do our part, or else.

The role of the prophet was to help us see that what is now is not what must be. And to help us figure out how to get there.

Over the next number of months, we'll begin to get into the Prophetic section of the Hebrew Bible. We'll go via Joshua and Judges, because there are a few worthwhile and/or important things to engage with there, and then we'll start digging into prophetic stories by I Samuel.

And, as promised, all this will be interspersed with other things– for example, there's a multi-part American history series (one that illuminates some of the painful things about now, too) that I've been looking forward to launching.

But the prophets are coming– because we need them, and their wisdom, so urgently today.

You have been told, mortal, what is good, and what God requires of you: Only to do justice, and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

If you value this work, if you think having an independent moral voice matters now, sign up for a paid subscription.

This is a community-supported publication, and it only functions when the people who value it show up for it.

And as always, House of Study access is always available if paying isn't for you right now; life@lifeisasacredtext.com and we'll hook you up.

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This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/moral-injury/ on Mar 13, 2026 at 8:36 AM EDT.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | FEB 19, 2026, 9:30 AM EST

Ask the Community Time!

You get to talk to one another again, yay

We have the extraordinary privilege of being in a community with a ton of other insightful, thoughtful people who also engage deeply with hard questions about the stuff that matters–

whether ethics, justice, spirituality, religion, how best to try to love one another down here, and/or just the messy stuff of being a person.

Ask the Community posts are a special time for folks to connect in an unstructured way– to get the advice you'd been looking for and to just get to know one another. And to share your recommendations of books, movies, podcasts, other media, whatever else—as always, the floor is yours.

What are you thinking about? Stuck on? Wondering about?

- Questions about navigating these moments in history?

- Questions about navigating your own spiritual practice, sticky family issues, or anything else?

- ISO recommendations (of books, music, podcasts, synagogues or churches in Kansas City or gluten-free bagels or ?)

- Perspectives you might ask for on a topic that's in the public conversation now? Remember– this is a locked space and there are diverse voices here, and we don't hear voices outside of our own echo chambers nearly enough.

- What do you have to offer that you think these folks might be into?

- Got a suggestion of any of the above, and/or an insight, a poem, something else you think others might want to hear about?

- What's on your mind generally these days??

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/communitythread/ on Mar 13, 2026 at 8:35 AM EDT.

RABBI DANYA RUTTENBERG | FEB 12, 2026, 10:30 AM EST

The Love Psalm Hypothesis

finding the pop music that draws out our best selves

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an everybody-celebrating, justice-centered voyage into ancient stories that can illuminate our own lives. It‘s run on a nonprofit, so it’s 100% NAZI FREE. More about the project here, and to subscribe, go here:

tl:dr: here's a suggestion for thinking about love songs in a new way– a test to see whether they might be the worst of our toxic culture or might help foster the best parts of us.

When I was a freshman in high school, I stayed over at a friend's house one Saturday night. It was somehow decided that I would join her at her Christian youth group the following morning.

Kirst and I had other things in common, needless to say, but sure, fine– I'd tag along this time, I guess, for ease of logistics?

So then we’re sitting around in a circle, and the youth pastor plays Peter Gabriel‘s "In Your Eyes," which was a major song at the time (this was 1989, the same year Say Anything came out.)

Ahh, Lloyd Dobler, confusing Xers' understandings of what's appropriate for decades. Romantic? Creepy? Setting the bar?? Stalker material??? (The iconic Lloyd Dobler with the boom box gif)

Youth Pastor asked us to consider how we might hear this song as not a love song to a partner, but, rather, as a love song to God.

Now, at the time it felt like– and, candidly, I really think it was– one of those Youth Group Pastor (tm) attempts to try to be relatable to kids via pop music because the song had a lyric about churches – but I was a little atheist Jew at the time, so I definitely wasn't the target audience regardless.

But not long ago, a dear friend and I were talking about the toxic state of pop music and the way that it’s always been toxic, honestly.

May the brilliant Andrea Gibson's memory be for a blessing and a revolution always. Andrea Gibson: So I keep asking-- what about this culture helps me know who I truly am? And what about this culture (Iinlcuding the parts I always consider to be "good"_ are a wall in the way of me knowing who I truly am?)

Part of this is about how our culture often reflects kyriarchy– we could be here all day listing all the songs and books and movies etc. that reflect and amplify our society's misogyny, ableism, racism, transphobia, fatphobia, horrible ideas about a person's worth being about what they produce or how much wealth they possess, and more. Sure.

And part is about what happens when you live in a culture that both fears death and requires the novel to survive (e.g. declaring those jeans out of style is how you make people buy new jeans).

So we valorize youth, lift up culture made by young people who are, all too often, still deep in their damage, or who don’t (yet) have very healthy ideas of what relationships could look like.

For a lot of us, a lot of getting older means seeking insight into our own stories and histories, doing a lot of healing work, trying to find new ways of being and doing that are better than how we used to be. (Not everyone, obviously–*gestures around*) For many of us, the older version is a bit wiser than who we were when we were younger. It's not always by choice, sure– sometimes life happens at us, and we're forced to grow as a result– but still.

Of course, some folks show profound wisdom from the a young age, some artists get less helpful as they age, some apparently seem to show their true colors more, and some just start toxic and always stay that way. And not all singers are songwriters, sure.

But between a bunch of kyriarchy and unresolved trauma, we hear a lot of unhelpful words echoing in coffee shops and the grocery store, in the background of social media and scoring our movies, telling us what our most intimate relationships should look like.

And like it or not, those words seep in, become part of the soup of our thinking. Especially if they're words with which we connect in some way.

Share this post:

How many times have you revisited a song that had gotten you through a bad breakup at some earlier point in your life, and thought,

"Oh, wow... the protagonist of this song should maybe respect– or set– some, uh, better boundaries??" Or try using their words??

😬

And even as some of these artists grow and age– and perhaps gain perspective and wisdom– our culture has often moved on, and we (the collective cultural we) so often demand that they continue lifting up their earlier– sometimes less sage work. As my friend put it, "Even Joan Baez is stuck singing 'Diamonds and Rust,' forever." (Not that she wasn't wise then. But come on.)

But here's the thing:

Some artists, even popular musicians, are able to do some of thing that art is supposed to do– to connect us with something bigger, beyond ourselves, to bring a wider vision of the universe, of what's possible, into being.

What I'm about to share is a rough idea, not some unshakable truth.

This is just a possible lens to play with!

👉 Always beware of binary thinking.

But I'll start with the observation that every religious path, just about, has a tradition of love songs to the divine, expressions of longing and seeking union. For example, Jewish Friday night (Shabbat) services begin, in many communities, with Yedid Nefesh:

Beloved of my soul, compassionate parent, draw Your servant to Your will. Let Your servant run like a gazelle to bow down before Your splendor. Let Your affection be sweeter than a honeycomb or any other taste. Splendorous one, most beautiful radiance of the world, my soul is sick with love for You...

Sick with love! Affection sweeter than any taste. This is a longing that has not been met yet– a longing for what the Hasidic tradition refers to as deveikut, union with the divine– from the same root as the word to unite, to cling, that's used to describe what happens in Genesis 2:24:

Hence a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, so that they become one flesh.*

The connection between union with the Holy and the love we feel down here has always been visible.

We see not dissimilar language from Yedid Nefesh in Sufi poetry, like this from the 13th c. North African poet ‘Afīf al-Dīn al-Tilimsānī**

O Gazelle, in my heart, you have a meadow.... There is no life but your love....

*In Modern Hebrew, devek is glue, if that helps you grok the word.

**Translation Sulayman Ibn Qiddees. Sufism is, of course, a branch of Islam. (There's a generation of inaccurate translations of Sufi poetry by white non-Muslims, and more Muslim scholars and native speakers of the relevant language(s) have been correcting them.)

The 14th c. Italian Catholic mystic Catherine of Sienna wrote,

“I won’t take no for an answer,”

God began to say

to me

when God opened God's arms each night

wanting us to

dance.

And, I'll note, this line of thinking doesn't discount the possibility for sensuality, sexuality, eroticism, as the esteemed 17th c. Jewish Yemenite poet Shalom Shabazi illustrates, in a piyyut– a liturgical poem– about longing and exile:

I, deep in Exile my feet are sinking.... Morning and evening the Princess* I do recall My heart. my very being throbs with desire.

*Presumably the Shekhina, the indwelling aspect of the divine

Or this evocative take by Shimon HaGadol of Mainz, Germany (960-1020 CE) on the Song of Songs:

The faithful statutes ..were delivered by the mouth of God; their words are sweet to the palate, "[God] kissed me," etc. .... Affectionately [God] conducted me to [God's] chambers. "Oh draw me after thee...."

To the chambers!! (More here!!!)

These poems are plenty erotic. But sexuality here is not exploited, degraded, engaged without consent, horrifying, trite or trivial. Rather, sexuality, here, is an extension of the connection elsewhere in these poems. (More on ancient and contemporary Jewish sexual ethics here.)*

*To be clear, this sex-positive rabbi believes that consent, respect, agency, embodiment, safety, seeing another's wholeness and more can happen in many ways. And though Judaism is a patriarchal tradition with streams that still value (the paternity-confirming convenience of) young women's virginity, there's no rule about waiting until marriage or having just one sexual partner over one's life. So the issue is exploitative vs. connected, whether for ten minutes of butt-shaking on the dance floor or decades of marriage.

And these passionate love songs to God sure sound like great (human) romances– and my friend and I began to speculate.

This article was downloaded from https://www.lifeisasacredtext.com/lovepsalm/ on Mar 13, 2026 at 8:35 AM EDT.

Table of Contents

Life is a Sacred Text: 2026 Mar 12

All articles

notes on the creative process

Be in my next book!

on this the world endures

the queen's somatic map

on the other trafficked girls in Esther

Moral Injury

Ask the Community Time!

The Love Psalm Hypothesis