- A Letter from the Rabbi – December 2020 December 2, 2020
Shalom, mishpachah; Dear family, As all those old jokes go, you want the good news or the bad news? Three different pharmaceutical manufacturers have announced that their vaccines appear to ...
Read more - A Letter from the Rabbi – November 2020 November 2, 2020
I taught English and mentored Israeli high school seniors at Ha’Kfar Ha’yarok, (The Green Village) an agricultural boarding school, in 1993. Ha’Kfar Ha’yarok has changed in a lot of ways ...
Read more - A Letter from the Rabbi – High Holy Days Mailing August 8, 2020
I can easily imagine the collective groan of disappointment and frustration going up in every Beth Shalom household as you read that we will be holding our High Holy Services ...
Read more - A Letter from the Rabbi – June 2020 June 1, 2020
I love summer. To me, summer means camp, beach vacations to Cape Cod, Boston’s north shore, or Maine, grilling outside, shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops, water gun fights, lazy evenings strumming ...
Read more - A Letter from the Rabbi – May 2020 May 1, 2020
Some of the Torah’s stranger rites involve pure water in earthenware vessels. Numbers 5:17, “The priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel…”, doesn’t come from one of my ...
Read more - A Letter from the Rabbi April 1, 2020
Just over a week and a whole world ago, my family and I went to the Carmel Clay Public Library to get some books. Social distancing had already begun, but ...
Read more - There is No One Else March 25, 2020
Dear friends, Shalom, chaverim
A bumper sticker caught my attention when I was living in Israel. It read, simply, “ain od milvado” The first two words were familiar to me from ...
Read more - Yom Kippur Morning — Fake News, Propaganda, and Truth October 9, 2019
Mark Twain once said “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.”
But that’s not true!
Well, the sentiment is sincere. But this ...
Read more - Erev Kol Nidrei — Repentance, Restitution, Reparations? October 8, 2019
What is Yom Kippur all about?
Is it about T’shuvah — making a change within; or
Is it about S’lichah u’M’chilah — pardoning others and and wiping the slate clean; or
Is it ...
Read more - “And all the nations of the world shall be blessed through your descendants”: Antisemitism and the Strange State of the Jewish Union. September 30, 2019
About 5 years ago, I was visiting the Holocaust museum in St. Louis, Missouri with a group of fellow hospital chaplains. I’d been to this Holocaust museum before, as well ...
Read more - Erev Rosh Hashanah: Va-Y’hi Or — Let There Be Light! September 29, 2019
Just as it says in our Shofar service: Ha-Yom Harat Olam: today is the birthday of the world. It is the year 5780 on the Jewish calendar, so today marks ...
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