Pesach – So We Left Egypt. Who Cares? — By Ben
As we prepare to celebrate Pesach, we once again return to the story of how God took our ancestors out of Egypt. We’ll do the two seders, abstain from chometz, […]
Category Archives: Holidays
Purim – The Biggest Upset — By Ben
The Atlanta Falcons, Hillary Clinton, and La La Land walk into a bar. The Atlanta Falcons say, “I can’t believe it, 3rd quarter, we were up by 3 touch downs. […]
Purim – The Anti Semitism of Shushan — By Ben
The story of Purim has drama, suspense, nudity, plot twists, and drinking. So much drinking. But despite all that craziness and tomfoolery it’s actually a troubling story of how a society […]
Rosh Chodesh and New Beginnings — By Ben
Parshas Bo has a ton going on. It finishes up the plagues (most notably the death of the first born), the Jews are given their freedom finally becoming a nation, […]
Chanukah, a REAL holiday. — By Ben
Chanukah is a lie. Or rather that’s what I came away with after a seminar taught at my reform Temple when I was 12. I don’t remember much, I just […]
Divine Hug in Real Time — By Barbara Heller
There’s a song by the great Sara Bareilles, “Hold My Heart”. That song was playing in my head this morning. Its one of her lesser known hits but it always […]
Lessons from Yom Kippur
With the craziness of the holidays (aka chagim), very often things on the Jewish schedule come to a halt. Classes are put on hiatus, work is nearly impossible to accomplish, […]
The Soulful Sounds Of Silence – By Marc
Rabbi Shlomo Seidenfeld sent out a powerful holiday message to the group I went to Israel with. In it, he talked about Maimonides and his notion that the blast of the […]
Structure of Prayer – Rosh Hashana — By Ben
A couple of weeks ago, I started going through the nuts and bolts of the Shemoneh Esrei. I mainly focused on the opening (1-3) and closing (17-19) sets of prayers […]
Forgiveness: To Give And Accept Or At Least Really Try – By Marc
The New Year is upon us… 5777 is around the corner… It is time to take stock of the things we did and did not do. A scary proposition for […]
Six Degrees Of Kosher Bacon 