Nostalgia – Yom Kippur 5780/2019
I actually hated the song when I first heard it. Everyone was playing it, it was all over the radio, and at the local high school a dozen teenagers covered the song decked in clothes carefully selected to look nonchalantly thrown together from a thrift shop wardrobe....
Time to Prepare – Kol Nidrei 5780/2019
Tonight is Kol Nidrei, the most meditative and moving moment of the Jewish liturgical year. This day marks the culmination of the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, the Ten Days of Repentance. Through the prayerbook, our Machzor, we have been bombarded with petitions and pleas...
Embrace Complexity
Once the congregation found itself in the middle of a fierce debate. Do we stand or sit for the Shema. Half the group was convinced that we should stay seated for the Shema, half convinced we stood for the Shema. Not to get into too many technicalities on Rosh...
Diary of Anne Frank
Just a few short weeks ago, I went to the the Indiana Repertory Theater to see their production of the Diary of Anne Frank. The truth is I have not seen that play in years. I know that I read the diary, and that I saw the movie, but most of the memory of it was gone...
Anti-Semitism is Real
I remember visiting Prague years ago with several friends. Tami and I decided it would be meaningful to spend Shabbat there with the local community, rather than visit only the Jewish cemeteries and monuments to those lost to the Holocaust, including the famous attic...
How can we communicate about difficult topics without jeopardizing our relationships?
Madeline Anderson Two weeks ago in parsha Toldot, we learned the story of Jacob and Esau, the sons of Isaac and Rebekah. Isaac favored Esau because he was a hunter and he provided Isaac with delicious meats, so Isaac planned on giving his birthright to Esau when he...
We Can’t Turn Our Backs on Tornillo
I have taken many bus rides through the desert. The rabbis who gathered in a Texas desert yesterday, many after a pilgrimage from the farthest reaches of our country – from East Coast and West, from Chicago and Michigan, Indiana and all points in between joked with...
What Do We Do Next?
Once there was a man who was devastated with sorrow. He found that he could not work, could not eat, could not care for himself or his family. Not knowing where to turn, he went to see his rabbi. “Rabbi,” he cried, “my sorrows are overwhelming. They threaten to drown...
The Spiritual Partnership of Adam and Eve
Current events in our country and abroad have us feeling waves of apprehension and frustration, and even a little motion sickness. It is too much, and there is simply too much at stake. And it is in that mindset that we open our Torah scroll, once again, as we do...
Yom Kippur 5779/2018
Camp is a magical place. It is. I don’t know of any other institution that inspires in both children and adults the same deep love. When I talk to someone about their camp experiences, their souls open up. Even their body language changes, their eyes get larger,...
