Welcome to the Logbook – my running record of where Jewish tradition and speculative fiction meet. Here you'll find essays, reflections, and field notes on the questions that keep me reading late into the night.
Jewish tradition teaches the world as it should be; speculative fiction imagines what it could be. I find Torah in both. Jewish wisdom abounds throughout science fiction and fantasy – in the writer, in the characters, and in the reader who reads old words anew.
When Leonard Nimoy gave Mr. Spock the word "Remember" in Star Trek, he drew on a deep teaching of his Jewish heritage. A Passover reflection on memory from the Sea of Reeds to the final frontier.
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel agree: shifting your point of view can turn the mundane into the miraculous. A Chanukah reflection on wonder – from a single flask of oil to a galaxy far, far away.
How would we welcome Shabbat on a space station, the Moon, or Mars? The story behind the paper that helped make me The Sci-Fi Rabbi: where Judaism and science meet.
How does a boy from Rhode Island end up as the Sci-Fi Rabbi? A story that runs from a childhood spent reading science fiction and fantasy to a rabbinate where Judaism and speculative fiction spark new insights into living a Jewish life.