• How Struggling with Esaw Shapes Our Faith

    Where does faith in God and in Torah come from? There are many places—our tradition itself is certainly one source— the beauty of living a Jewish life itself is a fountain for, and practice of, faith. Additionally, there are “proofs” that medieval Jewish thinkers express such as the proof from design, that just as the…

  • 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…

  • What Makes Israelis Unique: Reflections on a Trip to Israel During the Hamas – Israel War

    I spent the last week in Israel on a YU/RCA/Mizrachi trip for rabbis. Before I left, I was worried. I thought to myself, we are all feeling so much doom and anxiety and to fly to the heart of it will, no doubt, be deeply disturbing. But just the opposite was true. Instead of hopelessness…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • One friendly greeting can inspire world peace

    This week I saw the movie Golda. The movie focuses on Golda Meir during the course of the Yom Kippur War. (For more on Golda Meir’s life, be sure to get the new book Golda Meir by our fellow congregant Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt.) I did not know a great deal about the Yom Kippur War,…

  • 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…

  • Kohanim, Levites, and the Call to Serve

    In the first of this week’s parshiot, Matot, the Torah writes: “God spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Avenge the Israelite people against the Midianites; then you shall be gathered to your kin.’ Moses, in turn, told the army, ‘Let troops be picked out from among you for a campaign, and let them fall upon Midian to…

  • In Moshe’s Shadow: A World in Need of True Leadership

    In the first of this week’s double portions, Chukat, the Jewish people complain twice and Moshe’s response is not only unusual, but deeply perplexing. First, the people complain about the lack of water; God instructs Moshe to speak to the rock to draw out its waters. Instead of speaking, Moshe strikes the rock with his…

  • Holiness, Leadership, and the Limits of Equality

    In this week’s Torah portion, Korach, Moshe’s cousin Korach challenges the leadership of Moshe and Aaron alongside 250 men. He says, “The whole nation is holy, and God is among them, so why do you elevate yourselves above the congregation of the Lord?”  The verses which follow clarify that Korach and those with him wanted…

  • Learning from the Sins of the Complainers and Spies

    In this week’s parshat, Beha’alotcha, the Torah tells us that the Jewish people brought an offering on their first Passover in the desert, which was exactly one year after leaving Egypt: the 15th of Nisan. Strangely, though, nine chapters earlier the book of Bamidbar began in the second month – Iyar. So why now is…