Category: Rabbi’s Dvrei Torah

Here are the ‘Top Ten’ reasons to try out Shavuot this year to see whether it might become your new favorite holiday! Cheesecake. This holiday celebrates dairy delights. It’s THE holiday for vegetarians. Breakout those lactose pills if you need them! Cheesecake, blintzes…happiness! Shavuot is ‘Counter-Cultural’… Most people don’t celebrate Shavuot, or even know much…

These week’s double Torah portion, BeHar-Bechukotai, concludes the third book of this year’s Torah reading cycle – we finish Leviticus this week. Nevertheless, we continue with business-as-usual again as we immediately begin reading in the 4th book of the Torah, Numbers, next week. Is there ever really a break? A true vacation? Not from the Torah,…

F. Scott Fitzgerald observed that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” The Torah suggests a slightly different, though related, test. Intelligence is important for this test, but it is not the only aspect. The…

“Excuse me? Are you talking to me?….I’m looking around but I don’t see anyone else here?! Oh my God, you ARE talking to me!” This seems to be the feeling that many people of a certain age experienced three years ago at this season when the Coronavirus pandemic started. As the threat to older people…

The Jewish People are in a time of fearful crisis. Huge demonstrations are boiling in the streets of Israel, and counter protests are being planned. Political differences are exploiting and magnifying tensions that are inherent to the Jewish people along religious, cultural, and ethnic lines, world-views, and the vision of what – and who -…

It feels like spring outside…well, almost. The sunset is suddenly an hour later since we changed the clocks. Basketball’s ‘March Madness’ is more exciting than ever. We begin a new book of the Torah this week, the third of five, with parashat Vayikra. Passover is nearly here. This is a time for renewal, hope, and…

Shalom Chaverim! It was this week 3 years ago when the way we live our lives pivoted so dramatically. The COVID lockdown started and we found ourselves at home. The Torah portion that week is this same as it is again this week, and it remains both ironic and so fittingly apt in what it…

When I was young and naïve—last week in fact—I recalled how, when I was even younger and more naïve, one of the things that chiefly occupied my time was anger. I was either actually being angry at something or other, or I was consumed with trying to control or dissolve my anger once unloosed. Years…

It is not a coincidence that International Women’s Day falls next Wednesday (March 8), immediately after “The Fast of Esther” on Monday, and Purim on Tuesday: There is much to celebrate about the role and achievements of women in Jewish history and world history…and still a great need to highlight these specifically in order to…

The Voyager I spacecraft sent a photo back to earth in 1990 from more than 4 billion miles away. In it, the earth appears as a point of light, a crescent 0.12 pixels in size. It is barely noticeable. The noted astronomer and host of the old “Cosmos” television series, Carl Sagan, wrote the following…