Jewish Holidays
“He casts forth His ice as fragments. Who can stand before His cold.” Psalm 147:17 It’s been cold this week – so cold that where I live, the county cancelled school two days in a row. “Extreme weather days,” they are called, not “snow days.” Snow days can be fun; not so this kind of cold. It was colder in Chicago this week than it was in the North Pole. There’s nothing like the absence of something to make us more appreciative of its presence. Just as fasting on Yom Kippur helps us better appreciate food, being cold this week should make us more grateful for warmth. It’s not a... Read More
This week marks Shabbat Tzedek: the Shabbat closest to Martin Luther King Jr. Day in which we remember his life and work, celebrate the victories of the civil rights movement, and reflect on what still needs to be done in the pursuit of racial justice. However, on MLK Jr. Day, we often are presented with a sanitized, nonconfrontational version of Dr. King that is a far cry from the radical activist who was reviled during his time for his powerful justice work. Whether these misconceptions are promoted by those who are genuinely unfamiliar with Dr. King’s true history or by those who seek... Read More
In 1890, Rabbi Wolf Zeev Yavetz from Zichron Yaakov (a town south of Haifa) wanted to celebrate the Mishnaic holiday of Tu BiShvat with his young students. He decided to plant trees with them. Tu BiShvat was, in Mishnaic times, a calendar landmark set to evaluate the fruit of the trees for tax purposes. Rabbi Yavetz identified the educational and spiritual potential and seized the opportunity for an outdoor educational experience that left a mark both on the landscape and on his students' hearts. When we began forming Kodesh VeChol, the Reform congregation in Holon (a city of 200,000... Read More
The Painted Cave Wildfire roared through Santa Barbara when I was 20 years old, blackening 5,000 acres, destroying 427 homes, killing countless animals, and taking one precious human life. My neighborhood was leveled, and my home was gone. I fell into a depression so deep and oppressive that I could not imagine any other way of being. Two long years later, I began to notice a subtle change. To my bewilderment and delight, delicate tendrils of interest emerged from my charred inner landscape. Tiny shoots of ambition miraculously unfurled, first one and then another. I began to move... Read More
Tu BiShvat is known as the Jewish Arbor Day, and as such, it’s the time each year when Israeli schoolchildren plant trees. Perhaps it’s no coincidence, then, that it was a teacher, Ze'ev Yavetz, who instituted the custom of planting trees on Tu BiShvat. Only an educator could come up with such a hands-on, personalized way to connect with the building of the Jewish homeland. There is such profound wisdom in this act, proving that every action, no matter how small, counts. Even the small hands of a child can bring about big change. The change the Leo Baeck Education Center in Haifa is... Read More
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