Death and Mourning
Tishah B'Av

This Tishah B'Av, Act as if There is No God

Shayna Han
 August 2, 2022
Tishah B'Av is a day of mourning, commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples. In recent years, it's also a day to mourn other tragedies that have darkened Jewish history - the Romans putting down the Bar Kochba revolt, mass murders of Jewish communities during the Crusades, expulsions from England, France, and Spain in the Middle Ages, and the Holocaust.
Rabbi Dow Marmur z”l
Death and Mourning

Remembering Rabbi Dow Marmur z”l

Rabbi Rick Jacobs
 July 19, 2022
We have lost one of the G'dolay ha'dor, one of the rabbinic giants of our time. Rabbi Dow Marmur's life reflected the triumphs and tragedy of 20th Century Jewish life, beginning in Poland on the eve of the Shoah to his last days in the State of Israel. He was truly brilliant, incisive, and witty, with unshakable integrity.
star of david starry lights
Death and Mourning

For Some of Us the Holidays Are Just…Hard

Jaimie Green
 November 18, 2021
As we head into the holiday season, I am acutely aware of how much different this year is going to be than previous ones. I will be celebrating without my mom for the first time. My mother died in January 2021, and I'm still dealing with the unexpected waves of grief that wash over me, sometimes out of nowhere. As I head into this first winter holiday season without her, I'm not quite sure I know what to expect, other than everything is going to be very different.
photo of a bookshelf
Yom Kippur

Stuff

Lynn S. Denton
 August 27, 2021

This is not going to be a sad story, I promise. But it does start out with the process of going through my parents’ condo after their passing. Oh my goodness, they had a lot of stuff -- functional stuff, beautiful stuff, valuable stuff, stuff filled with...

A few gravestones at Mount Herlz military cemetery in Israel
Israeli History

Yom HaZikaron: Israel’s Fallen Heroes and Us

Rabbi Natan Trief
The day is a gut-wrenching one, and yet one profoundly important in the life of a country. It is a day when we let the pain in, when we listen to and internalize the myriad stories, when we understand that their fight is also our fight.