• Thanksgiving, Gratitude, and Jewish Wisdom

    This week is Thanksgiving and while it is not a Jewish holiday, it is the expression of an important Jewish idea.   Every day, giving thanks is important, but having a day devoted to thanks is a way of ensuring that we keep it on our minds on all the other days as well. Of…

  • Lessons from the Kohen and Moshe

    In this week’s Torah portion, Emor, we read of the Kohen and the many rules to which he must subscribe, above and beyond those of a regular Israelite. In addition to not becoming impure by a dead body and limitations on who he can marry, the Torah says: “Speak to Aaron and say: No man…

  • The Exodus Within: Finding Personal Freedom Through Change

    Yetziat Mitzrayim, the Exodus from Egypt, which we are currently reading about in the Torah, is not only a national historical event, but, as Rabbi Nachaman of Breslov put it, something that we as individuals, emotionally and spiritually, must engage in every day. For hundreds of years, the Israelites were born into a slavery, not…

  • From Bergen-Belsen to Redemption

    I have often wondered why in the text of the four questions of the Passover Haggadah and the original text of the four questions in the Talmud (Pesachim 116a), it says, “On all other nights, we eat leaven and matza, but on this night only matza,” whereas when the Haggadah describes the bitter herbs it…

  • Remembering Senator Lieberman: A Life of Service, Faith, and Humility

    Last week we lost a noble and wise Kesherite, Senator Joseph Leiberman, z”l. On Wednesday, when the news came to light and the texts of his passing began flowing in from all directions, I was just sitting down with a weekly Rambam-learning group of Kesher congregants who knew the Senator well. They began to tell…

  • Moments of Sanctity in Paris and Jerusalem

    Last month, I was in Paris for a few days visiting my daughter, Hava. While there, late at night, I wandered into a kosher pizza store in a hole in the wall in the Marais, the older Jewish neighborhood of Paris. There were a few small tables, some old salt and pepper shakers, a picture…

  • Gratitude on Thanksgiving: How Hakarat Hatov Shapes Our Lives

    This week is Thanksgiving and while it is not a Jewish holiday, it is the expression of an important Jewish idea.   Every day, giving thanks is important, but having a day devoted to thanks is a way of ensuring that we keep it on our minds on all the other days as well. Of…

  • Jewish Pain and Unity in War

    This week, I am traveling to Israel with a group of 15 rabbis through the Rabbinical Council of America and Yeshiva University. I go as a representative of our community and, along with the other rabbis, as messengers of the Jewish people in the diaspora. We are going in order to express, through our presence,…

  • From Pain to Prayer: Lessons on Faith in Times of Darkness

    In the end of this week’s Torah portion, Vayera, we read about the famous Akeidah, the binding of Isaac.  For millennia, people have written about the perplexity of this story—how could God command Abraham to kill his child? How could Abraham listen to God? What is the Torah trying to teach us? Sacrificing one’s child…

  • Finding God in the Fire

    Our ancestor, Abraham, is a mysterious figure. We meet him when he is 75 years old and we do not know much about him when God makes him the first Hebrew by commanding Abraham to leave his home and go “To the land which I will show you.” This, of course, turns out to be…

  • Noach and Jewish Unity

    The mourning, fear and anxiety which we feel as individuals and a nation is profound—there is so much sadness and loss among our people. At the same time, the sense of profound unity in Israel, which has come in the blink of an eye, is pervasive and unprecedented in recent times. Like one person with…

  • Shabbat Shuvah and the Transformation of the Self

    This Shabbat is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Return which falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur each year.  Why is Shabbat Shuvah so significant? After all, we don’t refer to the Monday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as the Monday of teshuvah. Shabbat plays a special role in the process of teshuvah, return…

  • Shabbat Shuvah and The Process of Return

    This Shabbat is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat of Return which falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur each year.  Why is Shabbat Shuvah so significant? After all, we don’t refer to the Monday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as the Monday of teshuvah.    Shabbat plays a special role in the process of teshuvah, return…

  • What Does Rosh Hashanah Reveal About Ourselves?

    This week is Rosh Hashanah, the New Year. Really the first day of the month of Tishrei, the holiday of Rosh Hashanah celebrates neither the first day of creation nor the last. The midrash says that Rosh Hashanah actually was the day that Adam and Chava were created. Though we say in the davening, “hayom…

  • Understanding Our Collective Covenant

    In this week’s Torah portion, Nitzavim, there are several words in the Torah scroll with seemingly extraneous dots on top of each letter in the verse, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all…

  • Exploring Divine Justice and the Mystery of Suffering

    In this week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei, the Torah writes: “If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Send the mother bird…

  • The Power of Habit

    This week’s haftarah, from the book of Isaiah, reassures us that God ultimately will comfort the children of Israel from the pain of exile and the destruction which they have suffered. When referring to the Jewish people’s pain, the haftarah relies on an interesting metaphor – a cup of wine.  “Arise Jerusalem, which has drunk…

  • Navigating the Jewish Journey of Exile and Rebuilding

    This week’s haftarah, the third of seven haftarahs of comfort we read following Tisha B’Av, begins by addressing the Jewish people as “aniya [afflicted]” and “soarah [storm-tossed]”. The meaning of the word soarah – storm tossed – is usually a reference in Tanach to a ship in rough waters, as in the phrase in the…

  • Moving Forward with Imperfection

    In his reminiscence of the Jewish peoples’ forty years of travel through the desert, Moses says in this week’s Torah portion, Eikev: “God said to me, ‘Carve out two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to Me on the mountain; and make an ark of wood. I will inscribe on the tablets…

  • Tisha B’av 2023

    Today is Tisha B’Av, the most mournful day in the Jewish calendar.  According to the Talmud, our exile is a product of sinat chinam, baseless hatred and divisiveness among the Jewish people.   This week I received a desperate WhatsApp message from Israel, from an individual asking me if I knew of any organizations they could…