When we gather to begin the celebration of Hanukkah next Thursday night, we will perhaps retell the story of the "miracle" of Hanukkah--that a little amount of oil that was only supposed to burn for one day burned for eight. As the story goes, once the Maccabees defeated the Greeks for independence, the Jews found …
Continue reading My Hanukkah Confession: I’m Feeling Like that Little Vial of Oil
We have once again come to a time that we can add the appendage "like no other," something we have been doing since March. After a Passover like no other, the High Holidays like no other, and a myriad of smaller, more personal milestones, we have arrived at a Thanksgiving like no other. As we …
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, …
Continue reading Reflection on the Day after Election Day, 2020
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 …
Continue reading We Know Mail-in Voting. It’s a Season, Not a Day
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: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1313186529058136070?s=20 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 …
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 …
https://www.youtube.com/embed/poSNoFQi5F8 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. …
Continue reading Isaiah for Today: A Creative Interpretation/Translation of the Yom Kippur Haftarah
https://youtu.be/uKIh6b0uJ24 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 …
Continue reading Kol Nidre 5781: “Are We Failing the Great Human Experiment?”
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, …
