Four cups of wine, four sons and the four questions. Those are three of the hallmarks of the סדר/Seder and they each hold a special place in our hearts and in our celebration of פסח/Passover. The four questions may very well be the most significant as they occupy the center of the holiday. The way we would say the “Four Questions” in Hebrew would be the ארבעה השאלות which literally translates into “The Four Questions”...Read more...
בְּכָל-דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לְהַרְאוֹת אֶת-עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם. In each and every generation a person is obligated to see themselves as having gone out from Egypt. These words from the הגדה של פסח/Passover Haggadah are well known to all of us. They come after Rabban Gamliel’s statement of the three core symbols we’re required...Read more...
I haven’t begun the process of bringing our Passover materials out of storage. Each year when I take the boxes out (and please know there are many… I mean many) I have the opportunity to reconnect with years of memories and with so much joy. One of the boxes is the Seder box, with all of the materials from our years of Sedarim. We have numerous versions of representations of the Ten Plagues and each of them portray the 10 occurrences in...Read more...
With Purim now in our rearview mirror, we have only a month until we celebrate the holiday of Pesach. We’ll be sending Passover materials to you in the coming days. Passover is a holiday steeped in law, ritual, custom and tradition. It’s a time when we truly embrace all that it is to live a richly engaged Jewish life in a non-Jewish world. Over the coming weeks, I want to offer some reflections about Passover to help you celebrate the...Read more...
Is it appropriate to celebrate? Can we be happy and rejoice and take part in levity and silliness? On October 7th, I was walking to the synagogue with Carrie and the girls for Simchat Torah. The walk to the synagogue was somber and felt foreboding and akin to a funeral processional. I bumped into Cantor Nati on the way and he was honest and said he wasn’t up to dancing with the Torah Scrolls or to singing and I told him I wasn’t feeling...Read more...
