THE TALMUD SAYS THAT ONE who teaches Torah to a child is as if one gave birth to that child. What it also says is, “That’s what you’re supposed to do.” As noted elsewhere, Torah is a great interest and…
Tag: Being Jewishly
Living Judaism with heart, soul, and all we have.
Five More Thoughts
1. ANOTHER SERVICE, ANOTHER ARMED GUARD. After making cordial introductions — as one of the service leaders, I was the first to arrive this morning — he informed me that an access-grate was askew below the sanctuary. One of our…
The Feeling
YOM KIPPUR AFTERNOONS ARE USUALLY the spacetime nexus where radical growth happens — and this year was no exception. Let’s set the stage. After an intense twenty-or-so hours of not eating or otherwise tending to physicality, continuous guided liturgical meditation,…
A Weary Wariness
UNTIL OCTOBER 7 AND ITS AFTERMATH, I hadn’t understood just how pervasive and systemic Jew-hatred was. (Is.) I did know it was Out There, of course, but only intellectually. It’s something else to see it in its natural habitat. Case…
Five Thoughts
1. WE HAD A WELL-ARMED GUARD at our synagogue service this morning. (In the United States. IN SONOMA. Which, as you may imagine, made/makes me feel both glad and sad.) 2. When our rabbi asked those visiting for the first…
Pithyism#.02%
WHY IS IT ONLY — OR chiefly — our minorities who long for universal brotherhood?
(Don’t) Be Like Moses
B”H, the following is scheduled to be delivered by me at today’s Yom Kippur service in Sonoma. Take from it what you will, or leave it be. TO PARAPHRASE ANOTHER FAITH’S holiday greeting, “Teshuva [repentance, return] is the reason for…
Posse Commentatus (An Alpha-Nerd Manifesto)
(Originally posted 2007.06.28) IN THE BEGINNING was the Text. But not for long. The Text – definer and exemplar, authority and comfort, platform and trampoline – was no ordinary collection of words. It spoke of history and possibility, treated miracles…
Sacred Comedy
LAST WEEK AT THE GROCER’S, the guy ahead of me in line is good-naturedly chatting up the sales clerk when he catches sight of my yarmulke. “What happened to the rest of your hat?” he asks. Without missing a beat,…
To be religious means to be honest, kind, and thoughtful. Anyone who lacks these qualities is not religious, no matter how careful one is in ritual observance.”
— Rabbi Marc D. Angel, introducing chapter 6 of Pirkei Avot
Prophylaxis
THE MISSIONARY AT THE DOOR was polite but insistent as she tried to hand me a tract. I bowed my head and pointed to my yarmulke. “No thank you,” I said. Her eyes widened and her mouth made a little…
Tree of Life’s members will do everything for the 11 dead except show up in their place.”
– Pittsburgh rabbi to Mark Oppenheimer, from the latter’s “The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood”