• The Stranger Within Your Gates: Answering Questions about Bais Abraham’s Recent Eshel Shabbat

    On a recent Shabbat, Bais Abraham hosted speakers from Eshel (www.eshelonline.org), a national organization building communities of support, learning, and inclusion for Orthodox lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Jews. The three speakers were LGBT Orthodox individuals, two of whom came to observance later in life and one of whom grew up Chassidic. They each shared…

  • A Religious Dilemma

    My friend and former student Esther (not her real name) embodies all the values and qualities that are deemed praiseworthy in the Orthodox Jewish community…except for one.   She is a leader of Jewish people helping to form observant and learned communities wherever she goes.  She is smart, modest, humble, learned in Torah, observant with the…

  • Is the Torah Moral?

    In this week’s Torah portion, Chukat-Balak, the Torah presents the chok (mitzvah who’s reason we can not know) par excellence, the Parah Adumah, the ashes of the red heifer as a procedure for removing the ritual impurity caused by being in contact with a dead body. Is this classic chok, (or for that matter all…

  • Shabbat HaGadol (Shabbat before Passover)

    This Shabbat, the Shabbat before Pesach, is called Shabat HaGodol, the “Big Shabbat”.  Four days before the Seder, the 10th of Nisan, the Torah commands that one must choose a lamb for the Passover offering and tie it up in preparation for the Seder.  The commentaries explain that the year the Jewish people left Egypt…

  • Passover 2021

    The Midrash says that this Shabbat, the Seventh day of Pesach, commemorates the day on which the Jewish people crossed the sea.   Thus, the Torah reading is the splitting of the sea and Az Yashir, the Song at the Sea.  The Talmud  has three opinions as to the mechanics of the way in which…

  • Passover 2020

    Maimonides writes the following about the seder in the Mishnah Torah, Laws of Chametz and Matzah, Chapter 7: “We should make changes on this night so that the children will see and will ask: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” until we reply to them: “This and this occurred; this and this…

  • Passover 2019

    The Talmud writes that in the month of Nisan the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt and in the month of Nisan they will be redeemed in the future (Rosh Hashanah 11a).   In Judaism, time is not just a measure of movement, but has unique textures.  Nisan is a time of freedom and redemption,…

  • Passover 2018

    At the end of this past weeks Torah portion is a very strange juxtaposition of ideas.  After the firstborn in Egypt are killed the Jewish people are told “therefore you use sanctify the firstborn of the Jewish people,” animals should be given to the temple and human beings are redeemed five coins.  But what does…

  • Passover 2018-2

    This Shabbat, the Shabbat preceding Passover is known as, Shabat HaGadol, “The Great Shabbat”.   What is so great about it? The Torah writes,  And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron…Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take everyone a lamb, according to the house…

  • The Power of Gratitude: Moses’ Response to Complaints

     In this week’s Torah portion, Be’halot’cha, the Torah writes:“Those traveling with the Jewish people (in the desert) had a desire, and the Jewish people also cried out and said, Who will feed us meat?  We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for free and now our souls are dry because all we have is…

  • Interpersonal Commandments

    Abraham welcoming the three men Recently I was in a community populated by older people.    After davening I was sitting in the passenger’s seat of a car and moved to the back to accommodate an older man who walked with a cane.   His friend, an older holocaust survivor, who has lived for all…

  • Making Sure Judaism is Fair

    One of the tenets of Morethodoxy as I see it is finding as many and as wide a range of opportunities as possible within halacha for all Jews to engage in Judaism and connect to God.   In the case of women this means finding greater room for women’s leadership, women’s learning, women’s expression, and women’s…

  • Defining Morethodoxy (a re-posting of an earlier essay)

    Morethodoxy.  One more label to add to an already thinly divided Jewish world? In subtitling our blog “Exploring the Breadth, Depth and Passion of Orthodox Judaism,” I think we aim to overcome the limitations that labels impose.  To see Jewish life not as it often is seen today as a linear spectrum from insular to…

  • What does one need to be a Jewish leader?

    Is talking to God a prerequisite for being a Jewish leader?   If so Adam would have been the first Jewish leader; but he was not.  Is being a tzadik, a righteous person a prerequisite for Jewish leadership?  If so Noah would have been first Jewish leader; but he was not.  It is Abraham in our…

  • Tweaking the Jewish Image of Relationships

    I recently went to hear Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski speak of the respect the Torah demands in relationships.  He quoted the Talmud, which says, “a man must love his wife as himself and respect her more than himself.”   He spoke of the fact that the Talmud forbids rape within marriage, something the western world only…

  • Why are we so Childish when it Comes to Yom Kippur?

    Yom Kippur will arrive this week and thousands of Jews will attend synagogues.  Why is it that so many attend synagogue on Yom Kippur, but not the rest of the year?  What is it about Yom Kippur that draws us?  No doubt because it is a holy day, we want to be present.  But many…

  • For Crying out Loud!

    In a few days, on the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, many of us will fulfill the once a year commandment of hearing the sound of the Shofar.  The mitzvah of the Shofar, as reflected in the blessing we make upon it, is not to blow the shofar, but to hear its sound. There are primarily…

  • The Highest and the Lowest

    The Rambam writes in the Laws of Tishuvah (return) about this season before the holidays that, “All people should see themselves as half guilty and half meritorious, if they do one sin now they tip themselves and the entire world with them to the side of guilt and cause destruction, if they do one mitzvah…

  • Tishuvah-Return

    We call the process of repentance tishuvah or “return”.   This is very telling.  The process we engage in during this Jewish month of Elul and through Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot is not a process of becoming someone we are not, but rather a more organic process of getting in touch with who we really are…

  • Prostitutes, Rabbis and Teshuvah (Return)

    The Talmud tells two stories of Rabbis visiting prostitutes and subsequently doing Tehsuvah (return, repentance).  A comparison of the two stories yields deep insights about our own work of Tishuvah at this time of the year.   A good and inspiring Month of Ellul to all. Story #1 (Babylonian Talmud, Minachot 44a) Once a man,…