The Eshet Hayil In Our Lives
Photo: publicdomainpictures.net An email from My Jewish Learning about “A Woman of Valor” prompted me to pivot the next evening’s planned adult learning session to looking at these 22 verses from Mishlei, the Book...
Author: SusanSchwam
Live Long And Prosper?
By Oklahoma Heritage Association, Gaylord-Pickens Museum – Author, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25656727 This post also appears on www.jewishsacredaging.com January 5, 2022 began the third year of the seven and a half-year cycle of Daf...
Nitzavim: Making A Difference To one Can Mean The World
In this week’s Torah reading, Nitzavim, Moses speaks to the assembled Israelies, nitzavim hayom kul’chem lifnay Ado-nai elo-haychem… l’ov-r’kha biv’rit Ado-nai elo-hecha “standing here today, together, in front of the Lord your God, to...
Breaking Free, Breaking News?
“We interrupt this program to bring you this special bulletin….” Remember those? And in the days before DVRs,you couldn’t get back what you missed of the show! This Shabbat, we interrupt your annual...
Dissenting: SCOTUS and the Talmud
On January 5th, I marked one year of Daf Yomi, the practice of studying one page of Talmud per day, every day. Now before you get overly impressed, keep in mind that I often...
Lighting Up The Darkness
Darkness and light are motifs that have been around since, well, the beginning. Coming as it does at the darkest time of the year in the northern hemisphere, Hanukkah–the Festival of Lights–acknowledges the very...
Simchat Torah – The Joys of Beginning and Ending
Twenty-Eight years ago, the day after Simchat Torah, we were blessed with a daughter whose Hebrew name is Simcha Yehudit – “Joy of Judaism” or “Jewish Joy.” The choice of name had nothing to...
My Grandmother’s Diamond
This week’s Torah reading–Toledot–contains the famous story of Isaac “unknowingly” bestowing his blessing for Esau on Jacob. The text tells us that “Isaac was old, and his eyes were too weak to see,” so...
What We Can Learn From Mrs. Noah
This week we read Parashat Noah, the second weekly reading in the Torah, and it opens with God telling Noah to build an ark, gather his family and two of each animal, before the...
Dying to Live Our Best Life
It could be said that our patriarch, Jacob, was the first person to create an ethical will, essentially, a spiritual bequest to his heirs. In this week’s Torah reading, Vayechi, which means, “and he–meaning...
