‘Why This Me?’

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Key to Peace

By Rabbi Isaac Jeret

In most instances, families relocate due to a measure of dissatisfaction with where they live currently and a degree of hope for where they might arrive. The Torah portion of Lech-Lecha presents the beginning of the epic Israel-bound family journey of the Jewish people. It is distinct in various respects from all other family relocations recorded in the Book of Genesis or elsewhere in the Torah. A journey that continues still today, it retains central purposes that date back to Abraham’s formative travels even as its unfolding, historic itinerary inspires travelogue entries and reflective commentary with each passing day of the Jewish present.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

The Naked Truth

By Rabbi Dov Fischer

Noah, the complete, righteous soul of his generation, gets himself good and drunk after the flood experience has passed. He has planted a vineyard, acted as his own vintner and sommelier, and become so inebriated — perhaps publicly in the open field, perhaps lying asleep in bed — that he is stark naked (Genesis 9:20-21).

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Mystery in Creation

By Rabbi Laura Geller

Hebrew letters, when decoded, are magical. So it was especially powerful when my adult b’nai mitzvah Hebrew class was working on the letter Bet and opened the Torah to this week’s portion to find that it’s the first letter of Torah.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

What Are You Learning?

By Rabbi Daniel Bouskila

Nine years ago, while attending the United Jewish Communities’ General Assembly (GA) in Chicago, I had the privilege and pleasure of hearing Pulitzer Prize-winning author Herman Wouk — known for bestsellers like “The Caine Mutiny,” “Marjorie Morningstar,” and “The Winds of War” — address the opening plenary. What many do not know is that Wouk is a yeshiva-trained Orthodox Jew who studies Talmud daily.

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Joy Is Vital

By Rabbi Laura Geller

After two days of Rosh Hashanah and a very long day on Yom Kippur, you’d think that Jews would be exhausted. Isn’t it enough already?

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Heaven and Earth

By Rabbi Haim Ovadia

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Waking Up to Life

By Rabbi Daniel Greyber

It is 38 degrees on a Monday night. Our family wakes up in a tent cabin in the high country of Tuolumne Meadows, ready for the beauty, and warmth, of the Yosemite Valley, where we have reservations Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night. But a wildfire has different ideas.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Life’s Journey

By Rabbi Elazar Muskin

The renowned Oxford professor Benjamin Jowett, the great 19th century translator of Plato, was the ultimate paradigm of the ivory-tower scholar. Once, as he was walking across the commons at Oxford, he stopped a student and asked, “Please can you tell me, am I walking toward or away from the cafeteria?”

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Love Conquers Fear

By Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater

No catchy intro, no fancy hook this week. We are almost at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We are deep in the month of Elul, the time when we prepare our minds, bodies and souls for the upcoming days of prayer, teshuvah (repentance) and renewal. Now is the moment to ask hard questions, big questions, intense questions and, at times, uncomfortable questions. And we do this work in the shelter of God’s wings, dwelling in God’s holy home; as Psalm 27 reminds us, “Let me dwell in the house of God all the days of my life.” And so, as we read parashat Ki Tavo this week, with its magnanimous breadth of learning, I think that we can see the entirety of the parasha boiling down into a fairly simple, yet profound theme: love conquers fear.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Beyond Obedience

By Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky

Why shoo away the mother bird before taking her eggs or chicks? The Torah doesn’t say why we are commanded to do this. There is a major school of Jewish thought that regards this omission as being quite deliberate. This is the school that produced the Mishnah’s teaching prohibiting a person from praying, “God, have mercy upon me just as You have mercy upon the bird in its nest.” This school presumes that God’s laws have no known rationale, and that we observe them simply in order to do His will. It argues that it is pretentious of us to assume that God is having mercy upon the mother bird, and by extension that feelings of compassion when performing this (or any) mitzvah would be misplaced.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The Tragic Figure

By Rabbi N. Daniel Korobkin

What makes for a good tragedy? What ingredients need to go into a play or story for it to evoke strong emotion from the audience? This topic dates back to the times of the ancient Greeks, who invented the word “tragedy” and who considered it a very important form of entertainment.

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Is It Sufficient?

By Rabbi Lisa Edwards

When I was a teenager, my friends and I used to laugh at the public service announcements that played nightly on television, back in the day of legal youth curfews: “It’s 11 p.m. Do you know where your children are?”

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

A Loss Worth Noting

By Rabbi Dov Fischer

This summer’s “cultural news” has been dominated by the deaths of several particularly prominent celebrities.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Tears in a Bottle

By Rabbi Anne Brener

In a cabinet in my synagogue’s foyer is a small glass bottle with two openings. It is an object from around 100 C.E. which caught and held the tears of those who mourned the destruction of the Temple. According to a legend, it was believed that the Messiah would come when the bottle was filled.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Are We There Yet?

By Rabbi Debra Orenstein

When I was an undergraduate, Princeton celebrated the 10-year anniversary of co-education. A T-shirt sold on campus announced: “Ten years of women at Princeton!” Below, in smaller print, it read: “Too bad it took over 200 years.”

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Fruit of the Vine

By Rabbi Elazar Muskin

I led a summer Jewish history trip through Central Europe several years ago, which took us to Bratislava and its famous Jewish cemetery, where the great 19th century rabbinic leader, the Hatam Sofer, is buried. Our first stop in Bratislava was at the Danube Hotel, where we were to meet our local guide.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Acknowledging the Pinchas Within

By Rabbi Laura Geller

Last week we began the story of Pinchas, grandson of Aaron and great-nephew of Moses. Pinchas saw Zimri, a Jewish leader, and Cozbi, a Midianite princess, engage in a public display of immorality connected to the idol worship of the Midianites.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Spare the Rod

By Rabbi N. Daniel Korobkin

Corporal punishment is one of the most controversial subjects in child rearing. We have seen too many examples of child abuse from overzealous and emotionally unstable parents. At the same time, many families see nothing wrong with an occasional potch in tuchis (slap on the derriere) as a legitimate form of discipline.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Turn Enemies Into Friends

By Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater

We are once again at Korach, the story of the great rebellion, one of the most dramatic moments in the life of Moses and the people of Israel in the desert. From the Golden Calf, to countless cries of complaints and desires to return to Egypt, to the spies losing faith last week, Moses has not had an easy time as leader.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Speak Up

By Rabbi Lisa Edwards

I recently had the privilege of listening to Rabbi Arik Ascherman, an American-born Israeli rabbi who, often at great physical risk to himself, advocates for others through the organization Rabbis for Human Rights.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Seeing the Light

By Rabbi Isaac Jeret

In a series of magnificent discourses on this week’s Torah portion and, more generally, upon the construction and dedication of the Tabernacle’s menorah, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, derived two interdependent perspectives on the Jewish people, from which we can derive similar approaches to understanding humanity.

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Give Shalom a Chance

By Rabbi Daniel Bouskila

Someone would probably be labeled a hippie if he or she were to use the English word “peace” as a greeting or an expression when parting. Yet in Hebrew, the standard “hello” or “goodbye” is shalom (peace), and the word carries no modern cultural or political connotation.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Light the Fire

By Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

By Rabbi Haim Ovadia

Numbers, this is the English name of the Book of Bemidbar. Whoever chose the name must have been overwhelmed by the meticulous descriptions of the multiple censuses of the Israelites, the Levites and the firstborn.