Jewish Holidays
Jet-lagged, travel-weary, and a little anxious, I caught myself smiling at my reflection in the mirror of the hotel bathroom in Jerusalem. I was serving as the rabbi for a group of 39 couples who were experiencing Israel together for the first time. On this trip, designed specifically for couples, I found myself, ironically, without my husband for the longest stretch of time in recent memory. It bears mentioning that he and I do almost everything together; we wait to watch (most) of our favorite shows together, to eat at certain restaurants, and even try to do many of our day-to-day... Read More
Tu B’Av, while a minor Jewish holiday, has gained a surge in popularity in the last century, especially in the State of Israel. A Chag HaAhava (Festival of Love) commonly called “Jewish Valentine’s Day,” Tu B’Av is considered a particularly auspicious day for romance, expressions of love, and even weddings. Created to commemorate the day that peace was restored between the Jewish tribes, allowing women to marry men from different tribes, many see Tu B’Av as symbolizing the freedom to love without prejudice. Reform Judaism believes that whether a couple consists of different... Read More
A disturbing headline grabbed my attention as I scrolled through my news feed last month. It read, “Jerusalem chief rabbi: Gay people cannot be religious, shouldn’t pretend to be.” As a queer rabbinical student, I found the rabbi’s comments to be inaccurate at best and, at worst, possible incitement to hatred or violence against LGBTQ+ Jews. Additionally, the rabbi had seemingly given his remarks in a sermon on the preceding Shabbat, which fell on the 17th day of the month of Tammuz (from the Hebrew calendar). The 17th of Tammuz marks the start of a three-week period culminating with... Read More
It’s Shabbat morning and I am in a van making its way along a dusty, bumpy road. On my right is a young Arab-Israeli doctor in a hijab. In front of her is a middle-aged Jewish Israeli pediatrician. In front of me is an Eritrean nun, and she is sitting next to Professor Raphi Walden, a vascular surgeon on the management team at Sheba Hospital outside Tel Aviv and president of Physicians for Human Rights Israel. The sights and sounds of last night’s Kabbalat Shabbat service at the Tel Aviv port are still with me – the sun setting over the Mediterranean as hundreds of people in sunglasses and... Read More
One Friday evening in the summer of 2009, a month after my first-ever Shabbat dinner at my friend Malachi’s home, I accompanied him and his partner to a small local Jewish congregation not far from where I lived. This would not only mark my first time celebrating Shabbat inside of a synagogue, but it would also be the first time I attended an aufruf (a couple’s pre-wedding celebration), the first time I heard a joke in a true Brooklyn accent from an elderly Jewish man,(I forget most of it, but the punch line was that a mushroom says, “C’mon I’m a fun-guy!”), and the first time I ever met a... Read More
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