Rabbi 360

As I write this, we still don’t have a clear resolution to the Presidential election. This was not unexpected, as we knew that with the increased amount of early and mail-in voting, it was going to take a while to tabulate the results. How long is unclear, and we must remember to have patience. Patience,…

Earlier this week my colleagues from the Washington Coalition of Rabbis and I penned a letter which was then published in the Forward. (I was proud to be lead author.) We used our experience as rabbis and WA State voters to provide some insight and guidance as to how to approach this election. The text…

As we have recently learned, the President contracted the coronavirus, requiring a stay at Walter Reed Medical Center. After he returned to the White House, he tweeted the following: It was a callous tweet, to say “Don’t be afraid of Covid.” It was insensitive to the 210,000 Americans who have already died from the coronavirus,…

Coming off the High Holidays, when we had to rethink how we did everything in order to keep people safe from the coronavirus, we move into Sukkot, and again need to think about how to observe this holiday and keep everyone safe. As we do each year, we build a sukkah at our synagogue, the…

In response to all that was happening this summer, I was inspired to engage with the words from Isaiah that we read on Yom Kippur in a new and deep way. This is the result, and the video above is what we showed as part of our Yom Kippur service at Temple Beth Hatfiloh. Say…

In March of 1964, in Kew Gardens, Queens in New York City, a 28-year-old woman named Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered outside her apartment. She had returned in the early morning hours to her home after leaving the bar where she worked, and parked her car as she usually did in the Kew Gardens…

The sound of the shofar is such a visceral, ancient sound. When we blow the actual horn of an animal on Rosh Hashanah, it stirs in each of us a unique feeling. The shofar is simultaneously a wake up call, an alarm, a call to assembly, a call to action, and an announcement. This year,…

I know we complain that 2020 can not be over soon enough, but look on the bright side, 5780 is over tonight. It has been a most difficult year. And while gathering like this, virtually, remotely, is a reminder that the difficulty is still with us, we can take comfort and draw strength from the…

I usually like to enter the new year slowly, having enough time to collect my thoughts and intentions. I would have been planning for weeks, though our community has developed its own sweet minhag and customs, and so that very often means planning is smooth. This year is, of course, different. We have had to…