Rabbi 360

Last week, on the 17th of Tammuz, I was listening to a report on NPR about the (then) potential name change of the Washington DC professional football team. For its entire history, the team carried a nickname that was a derogatory term for Native Americans, and Monday the team announced they would retire that name…

The other day I was driving from the westside to the eastside through downtown Olympia and I just couldn’t believe we had gotten to this point. Everyone who was out, casually going about their day, was wearing a mask, keeping their distance from other people, and walking passed closed and boarded up businesses. It’s not…

Throughout the 40-year journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land, the Torah teaches, the former slaves learn what it is to become a nation. In the book of Numbers, which we are reading as part of our annual Torah reading cycle, the Israelites time and time again test Moses and God as they journey…

This week we read the famous story of the spies, who were sent into Canaan to scout it out in anticipation of the Israelites moving in. Moses sent 12 spies/scouts–one from each tribe–into the land. They spent 40 days wandering about, taking notes, looking around, and then returned to the Israelites to report. They all…

In the Torah this week we are told to make trumpets: God spoke to Moses, saying: Have two silver trumpets made; make them of hammered work. They shall serve you to summon the community and to set the divisions in motion. When both are blown in long blasts, the whole community shall assemble before you…

We are a nation in mourning. We are a nation mourning the death of George Floyd, whose recent death at the hands of the Minneapolis police has once again brought to the surface the reality of racism in this country. We are a nation mourning other victims of police brutality and racist violence like Breonna…

…tells a story of liberation from oppression; commands us to love the vulnerable, the poor, and the immigrant; reminds us that we are all part of one shared humanity; requires that we share and fairly distribute resources; and upholds the values of peace, justice, mercy, and compassion

While the traditional greeting for Shavuot is, like other holidays, chag sameach, one colloquial greeting that I’ve come across is “See you at Sinai.” The idea behind that phrase is that while on Shavuot we remember the biblical story of the revelation of the Torah by God to Moses on Mount Sinai, a story recounted…

The joke that during our quarantine time no one remembers what day it is rings true for me. While I’m able to stay on top of Shabbat, other days and tasks flow together. I realized the other day that I haven’t written my “weekly post” for a few weeks! In our Torah reading this week…