We have arrived at the final newsletter of the civil year 2023 and thus my last article of the year. As Jews in the modern world, we live in two distinct times at once. We live the Jewish Calendar, happy 16th of Tevet everyone, and we also live in the secular/Gregorian one at the same time. We harmonize the two and make it a point to allow for the Jewish one to set the tone and flow of our lives and the secular one to navigate our business...Read more...
Parshat Vayigash is about the twelve brothers coming together and leaving their contentious past behind. It is about the unity that is necessary for the Jewish people. One of the hardest aspects of unity is that no matter how we feel about one another the antisemites hate us all one and the same. There is no disparity in their eyes. Ayelet wrote this poem a few weeks back and would like to share it with the community. Shabbat shalom.
In 1991, I was called to the Torah as a Bar Mitzvah for Parshat Miketz, and this Shabbat I’ll be reading Haftara at services for the anniversary of my Bar Mitzvah. I’ll spare all of you the math; I’m turning 45 years old today. When I was a kid, we belonged to a non-traditional synagogue that identified as Reform and as such I didn’t chant my haftara, I read it in English. My Torah reading consisted of a few sentences that were not...Read more...
Last week I was in Israel trying to help, and to bear witness to the lives being lived. My last stop in Israel was to drop off a present for a congregant at their family’s home in Modi’in. I’d never been to this town before and I can attest to it being a beautiful one filled with lovely neighborhoods and modern amenities. When I was approaching the city, it dawned on me I was a week too early to be in this city.
Ya’akov stood in his father’s room giving him food that his mother, Rivkah, had prepared. Ya’akov was wearing his brother’s clothing and had fur on his arms to mimic his brother’s hairiness. The scent, the feel and the food all seemed to be from Esav but the voice was the voice of Ya’akov. Yitzchak said that “the voice was the voice of Ya’akov and the hands were the hands of Esav.” (Bereshit 27:22) This scene is the...Read more...
