• Adar’s Unique Joy: Finding Celebration in Transformation

    This week began the month of Adar Sheni, the month in which Purim falls. The Talmud tells us, “When Adar begins, we increase joy.”  But why specifically in this month? If it is because the happy holiday of Purim falls in this month, what about the month of Tishrei when Sukkot falls? After all, Sukkot…

  • Embracing Truth and Tension at Sinai

    This Torah portion, in which the Torah is given, strangely is named after Yitro—Moses’ father-in-law who was not a Jew, but a priest of Midian. Why? What is so special about Yitro? I think the answer may lie in a perplexing medrash. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 94a) states: “It was taught in the name of Rabbi…

  • Earbuds, Tea, and Brotherhood

    I recently bought AirPods. If you are over 75, or have just returned from being shipwrecked on a Pacific atoll, these are the small, white earphones that everyone wears. This week, I traveled by train to New York for a two-day meeting of rabbis. On the train back, as I walked through the aisle with…

  • Moments of Interfaith Connection and Inspiration

    This past week I shared a story in Shul which highlights one of the many ways that Kesher Israel is not only a vibrant community in Washington, D.C., but how, as the central congregation in our nation’s capital, makes deep impressions upon the world. Through the members it serves and the many groups and individuals…

  • Finding the Divine in Everyday Life

    In this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, we continue to read about the Mishkan, the Tabernacle which takes up a great deal of the laws of the Torah. It is arguably the most central element in the Biblical communal life of the Jewish people. The Mishkan not only was a place of Divine service but represented…

  • How Finding Your Voice Leads to True Freedom

    “The alphabet is an abolitionist. If you would keep a people enslaved, refuse to teach them to read.”  – Editorial on “Education in the Southern States,” in Harper’s Weekly, November 9, 1867 The Torah says in this week’s Parsha, Shemot, that after 210 years of slavery, the Jewish people cried out: “It was after many…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Theater, Art, and the Divine Drama: Replacing the Golden Calf

    In this week’s Torah portion, Vayakel-Pikudeh, Moses commands the Jewish people to give gold and silver and other materials for the building of the Tabernacle. The Torah tells us that the Jewish people were so enthusiastic that they gave more than was needed. The Midrash (Shemot Rabah) compares this to their donations of gold jewelry for the…

  • Unicorns and Redemption

    This week’s Torah portion, Terumah, begins: “God spoke to Moses, saying: Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved. And these are the gifts that you shall accept from them: gold, silver, and copper; blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen,…

  • Mishpatim 2023: The Altar and the Sanhedrin, Different Ways to Peace

    In last week’s Torah portion, the Torah was given at Mount Sinai to the Jewish people. At the end of that parshat, the Torah tells us about building an altar: “Make for Me an altar of earth and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your sacrifices of well-being, your sheep and your oxen; in every…

  • Civil Rights Alabama Trip

    I traveled to Alabama last week with a group of Rabbis under the auspices of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. It was a powerful trip exploring the places which were pivotal in the civil rights movement and talking to the people who organized it, led it and marched in it. I learned a great…

  • Reflections on Faith and Freedom from the Civil Rights Trail

    This week I traveled with the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington to Alabama with 20 rabbis from the DMV. (I suppose I should entitle this week’s email: “Letter from a Hotel in Montgomery”.) We went to Birmingham, Selma, and Montgomery; we visited Dr. Martin Luther King’s parsonage, the Rosa Parks Museum, and other important spots on the…

  • Insights from Maimonides on Prayer and Free Will

    This week’s Torah portion, Bo, opens with a theologically perplexing verse: “God said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart…’”. The question we have all asked is how God can punish Pharaoh if God has hardened Pharaoh’s heart to prevent him from freeing the people. After all, without free choice, it would…

  • Pharaoh’s Pride and the Plagues

    In this week’s Haftorah for Parshat Vaera, God says to the prophet Yechezkel: “Turn your face against Pharaoh King of Egypt, and prophesy against him and against all Egypt. Speak these words: Thus says the Lord, I am going to deal with you, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the big Tanin, who crouches in the Nile…

  • The Dual Metaphors of Jewish Proliferation in Egypt

    This week’s parshat, Shemot, states that the Jewish people were fruitful in Egypt and multiplied: “And the Jewish people were fruitful and multiplied and swarmed and very much increased and became robust, and the land was filled with them.” This term, “vayishritzu”, “swarmed,” as a noun means “insects” and as a verb means “to reproduce,” in…

  • The Symbolism of Matza and the Art of Sourdough

    We have recently finished reading about Yetziat Mitzrayim, the Exodus from Egypt, and soon it will be Pesach. The Talmud says that at the seder one must see themselves as actually having left Egypt. But if this is so, why not act out the Exodus? Dress the part (as some sefardim do), wear shackles and make bricks, experience…

  • Tabernacle, Shabbat, and the Risk of Idolatry

    With this week’s Torah portion, Pikudey, we will finish the book of Shemot, Exodus, and the reading of a 5 torah portion series that describes the tabernacle, a moving temple the Jews had in the desert, and its erection.   In these portions God describes the tabernacle to Moses while he is on the mountain…

  • Unity Through Equal Contribution and Respect for All Jews

    This week is Shabbat Shekalim, which commemorates the giving of the half shekel to the Tabernacle in the desert.    There were two kinds of gifts to the Tabernacle -any amount and any material one wanted to give, from the goodness of their heart, -and the half shekel which everyone had to give.  The poor…

  • A King Who Does Not Know Joseph: Lessons on Jewish Loyalty and Persecution

    In the preceding Torah portions we have seen Joseph exercise his power with great loyalty on behalf of Pharaoh and Egypt.  He not only saves everyone from famine, but in the process makes Pharaoh even richer by using the stored grain to bring all agricultural land under the ownership of Pharaoh and render all of…