Jewish Holidays
Earlier this year, while I was diarising our summer cruise dates, I realised we would land in Lisbon the morning before Rosh HaShanah. I knew we had a Progressive/Reform k’hilah (community) there – Ohel Jakov – as I had had the pleasure of meeting some of the community members four years earlier. I contacted their passionate leader and champion – Adriana de Souza – and arranged for us to join them for dinner and a service on erev Rosh HaShanah, in their proudly sacred space – a five-room apartment (up three flights of stairs, in an old building, hidden away in a suburb of Lisbon), which... Read More
Remember the feeling you had when you got on an airplane alone to study abroad, or when you packed up everything you owned and moved to a new city? All the emotions that might have come up for you - fear, excitement, trepidation -could very well have been Avram’s response to the famous line from the Torah portion of this year’s National Refugee Shabbat, Parashat Lech L'cha: “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a... Read More
Sukkot ended last week and I was not displeased. As an “avid indoorsman,” a term coined by Ben Fountain in his new book, Beautiful Country Burn Again: Democracy, Rebellion, and Revolution, Sukkot is my least favorite Jewish holiday. While one can imagine a beautiful sprawling sukkah filled with family, delicious food, and warm songs, their imagination would be in Scarsdale. In New York City, the celebration usually involves little comfort or room to maneuver, which is especially unfortunate when mosquitos on their last legs of seasonal life descend in a scene reminiscent of Alfred... Read More
If you attended worship services at a Reform congregation anywhere in North America during the last month or so, chances are pretty good you heard a sermon about Mister Rogers. Rabbis all over the country were so charmed, moved, and inspired by this summer’s documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” that we found ways to weave Fred Rogers’ messages into our High Holiday sermons – in my case, all four of them. Here’s why. We rabbis try, in our sermons, to marry the timeless with the timely – that is, bringing to bear the enduring messages of Torah and tradition on issues that we face today... Read More
B’reishit bara Elohim (breath) eit hashamayim v’eit ha’aretz. In the beginning, God created (breath) the heavens and the earth. -- Genesis 1:1 It’s all in the breath. The breath of creation. The breath of life. For me personally, as a singer and a cantor, the foundation of everything I do musically relies on the breath. The Torah opens with a statement, and our natural inclination to breathe between these two chanted phrases also provides a lively embodiment of everything it is trying to say. That breath of creation may be implicit, but it is provided by the Torah reader... Read More
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