Welcome to Life is a Sacred Text.

Banner says: Go to LifeIsASacredText.com, basically

Weā€™ve left Substack! Weā€™ve moved! Weā€™re at LifeIsASacredText.com now!


This website was too willing to accommodate hate speech, never mind that a private company doesnā€™t have any honest concerns about ā€œcensorship,ā€ just, like, enforcing its Terms of Service.

You can see the story of this project below, but go here to join the party as itā€™s happening now!

Come along on a fresh, expansive, loving, everybody-celebrating, nobody-diminished voyage into one of the worldā€™s most ancient and holy books. Itā€™s a book about which a lot of people have a lot of Big Feelings, to be sureā€”but I believe, passionately, that despite the fact that itā€™s been used as a bludgeon by too many people over the centuries, itā€™s really a roadmap for transformation in all the most critical of ways.

Yeah, Iā€™m talking about the Five Books of Moses.

The stories of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy can, chapter by chapter, help us to do the work we must do to become the people we are meant to be; can help us to become more useful to a world in need; can sustain us and nurture us as we do this work; can give us better tools to meet the inevitable challenges along the way.Ā 

This a project for everyoneā€”for Jews and non-Jews, for people who believe in God, people who donā€™t, and people who are kind of *shrug emoji* on the subject.Ā Ā 

This Substack is an exploration into these stories, a meditation, a chance to see our own lives more clearly by looking at them through the lens of these talesā€”to catch ourselves reflected back, to illuminate what might have been hard to discern.

Your life is a sacred text.

It can be read in so many ways.

This, maybe, is one of them.

Photo of brown-haired female rabbi with bangs, glasses, wry smile
Yep, thatā€™s a picture of me.

As for me, Iā€™m the award-winning author of eight books, most recently ON REPENTANCE: REPAIR AND AMENDS IN AN UNAPOLOGETIC WORLD, which is about the work of repentance in our personal lives, the public square, in institutions and on the national level. Iā€™ve written for outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Newsweek, Time and others, and have the profound honor of serving as Scholar in Residence atĀ National Council of Jewish Women. My pronouns are she/her. Would love to have you come hang out with me here.

For the full experience, join the community.

For more of everythingā€”archives, guided text study, open discussion threads, more musings, Ask The Rabbi threads, guest posts and building community through applying the biggest questions to our own livesā€”join the Life is a Sacred Text community.

And, to be frank, I put a lot of labor into this projectā€”a lot of time, a lot of years of learning and thinking, of writing and rewriting and double-checking sources into this. I believe in an ethos of paying people for their work (especially in religion spaces, where there can be an entitlement around clergy time and energy). If you love this newsletter, get value out of it, and believe in paying people for their work, consider a paid subscription.

Please know that nobody will ever be kept out of the community due to lack of funds. Just email lifeisasacredtext@gmail.com for a hookup.

And if youā€™d like to underwrite one of these donated subscriptions, you can do soĀ here.

Thanks for being here. Shine big.

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Space to say true things, with ancient stories serving as mirrors and lights. Now living at LifeIsASacredText.com šŸŒ±

People

MY REAL HOME IS lifeisasacredtext.com! Subscribe there please! I'm rarely around Substack these days! šŸ‘‹ā¤ļøšŸŒ± Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is an award-winning author whose most recent book is On Repentance and Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World.