We Who Stand in the Breach

Missed the first session of our monthly IKAR/Hadar Beit Midrash? The video is up with the text study, and it’s an intro into Elijah, one of the Bible’s most complicated heroes, with Rabbis David Kasher and Morris Panitz. Watch and read it, catch up, and if you want in on the rest (Rabbi Brous joins in future sessions), click here to sign up and join us in person.

For decades, Barry Michels has been one of the most sought-after psychotherapists in Hollywood—a practitioner whose no-nonsense, transformative approach earned him the devotion of some of the most creative minds in the industry. Bret Easton Ellis, Adam McKay, and Mark Levin are all patients who spoke openly in a 2011 New Yorker profile about how his methods changed their lives and their work. The book he co-wrote with his mentor and colleague Phil Stutz, The Tools, became a New York Times bestseller that has sold nearly 500,000+ copies, recently finding a new generation of readers through Jonah Hill’s acclaimed Netflix documentary STUTZ. Two years ago, Barry was, by any measure, a man at the height of his powers. And then a doctor delivered a diagnosis that changed everything: Lewy Body Dementia—the same degenerative disease that had taken his father’s life—would take his own. Ahead of All Parting: On Learning to Live with an Open Heart is a remarkable and unexpected book. Where one might anticipate a story of grief and loss, Barry has written something far more surprising: an expansive meditation on what becomes possible when we stop running from our deepest fears and allow ourselves to be truly seen. Barry is still practicing, still hiking, and very much present in the world, and that comes through on every page of this remarkable and deeply moving memoir. Michels shows us that being alive is more fragile and more astonishing than we usually allow ourselves to feel.

This week we are introduced to a tree – the Terebinth of Moreh. A tree that only shows up again once at the end of the Torah. What is there for us to learn from these instances about time passing and about fighting for a future you will not live to see?

In this episode of Jewish Crossroads, host Tamar Ish Shalom sits down with Rabbi Sharon Brous, founder and senior rabbi of IKAR in Los Angeles and one of the most influential voices in American Jewish life. Together, they explore the difficult questions surrounding Israel’s government, the global rise of antisemitism, and the growing tensions between Israel and Diaspora Jewry.