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. […]
Category Archives: Holidays
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 […]
Can You be Commanded to Love God? — By Ben
The month preceding Rosh Hashana is Elul. The rabbis say that the name Elul is an acronym for Ani l’dodi, u’dodi li or I am for my beloved, and my […]
Six Degrees Of Kosher Bacon 