This site began as an exploration of inner dimensions. For many years, as a historian exploring society and culture, I had written mostly about what could be verified and discussed outwardly – events, traditions, interpretations. Yet, as a student and practitioner of mysticism and spirituality, those writings were only half my life, and I knew the same was true of everything I wrote about. Everything that leaves a trace in the outer world has inner dimensions as well. I started the blog as a forum where I might evoke and portray those dimensions.
For some period of time after the shock of the 2016 elections, I shifted to writing in a socio-political vein, trying to see more deeply into the currents that were sweeping around us. After a while I realized that I was throwing sand into a sandstorm. Much of what I was saying found its way into the world through others’ voices. I kept what I thought were the best pieces on my blog, but withdrew from societal commentary.
Eventually I stopped regular blogging, and started writing fiction. My two novels are described below. I’ve devoted myself in the past three years to spiritual teaching and counseling, via dream circles, Torah classes, and mentoring students in Connie Kaplan’s Invisible Garment courses.
My most recent novel, Perhaps For This Moment, is historical fiction, set in the period after the Bar Kochba War (ended 135 CE). The story follows a Jewish woman of priestly descent, married to a leading rabbi, who had to flee Israel during the war, and start a new life in the city of Laodicea in Anatolia (modern Turkey). The tensions she encounters – with pagan culture and early Christian sects, as well as with her husband, family, and survivors in the homeland – challenge her to chart a new awareness of her life’s purpose.
Here’s a synopsis of my earlier novel, Earth Island Rising:
Journalist Elise Rubin has forged a successful career despite grief, loneliness, and an emotionally demanding marriage. When she undertakes a new project to explore a lost civilization in the Midwest, she is drawn by dreams and visions into the mysterious spaces between ordinary American towns and cities. Yet others have arrived before her, seeking to exploit the magic of the ancient places for questionable purposes. She is pursued by the living and the dead – the living who want to stop her, and the dead who see her as their champion — and their portal.
The mysterious lost civilization is real: the Adena-Hopewell culture of the Ohio River region two millennia ago. An opportunity to learn about that too!
Other parts of this site include my 2016-2018 blog (you can read it here) which was largely a response to American political developments; and my bio and information about other writings on a variety of subjects, particularly in the fields of American religious history and Jewish spirituality (click here).
Inner Dimensions 