The Challenges of Leadership
A record (remember those?) I used to listen to was called “You Don’t Have to Be Jewish” by Bob Booker and George Foster. At about the 12-minute mark is a sketch called, “The Presidents.”...
Join The Conversation At the Malverne Jewish Center
Is It Better This Way Or This Way?
It’s time for a new pair of glasses with a new prescription, and that started me thinking about this week’s Torah reading, Shelach Lecha. It begins with God telling Moses to send 12 men,...
Where Would You Like To Sit, Under My Vine Or My Fig Tree?
This Shabbat, we read from the prophet Zecharaiah, whose prophecy occurred during the time of King Darius of Persia. At this point in our history, some of the Jews who had been living in...
Ruth, Roosevelt and Righting the Wrongs of the Past
A few weeks ago, my husband and I visited the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, a place neither of us had been since childhood. Based on many of the exhibits we saw,...
Who Can You Trust?
I’ve never subscribed to the idea that illness and misfortune are Divine retribution for sins, and while our sacred texts–especially the Prophets–clearly relate bad things that happen to the people Israel’s sinful behavior, I...
Trouble for the Kohen with Trouble
This Shabbat we read parashat Emor, which includes a discussion about certain physical conditions that disqualify a kohen from performing his sacrificial duties. Leviticus 21:17-23 list these conditions–blemishes, limps, a hunchback, a broken...
Tazria-Metzora, Life In The Balance
One of my favorite TV shows is the BBC’s “Call The Midwife,” and waiting until October for the next season to start is a bit excruciating for me. Set in the late 1950s and...
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...
Don’t Be A Slave To The Text!
If you go to the terrific website, haggadot.com, you can download and customize hundreds of Haggadot for use at your seder, or just for fun. There’s a Schitt’s Creek Haggadah, a 10-Minute Dayenu Seder...
The Year of Narrowing
Mitzrayim, “the narrow places.” In our Torah reading cycle, we left Mitzrayim, the Hebrew word for the lands of Egypt, weeks ago, but in our calendar, we’re just two weeks away from retelling the...
