Chaye Sarah, Learning from Abraham
Va y’hihu chayay Sarah may-ah shanah v’esrim shanah v’sheva shanah shnay chayay Sarah And the years of Sarah’s life were 100 years and twenty years and 7 years, the years of Sarah’s life. This...
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Mindfulness in the New Year
A few months ago, a couple of my colleagues mentioned using an app called Ten Percent Happier, by former ABC news anchor Dan Harris, for meditation and mindfulness. No, he’s not paying me to...
Intelligence, Real or Artificial?
Shalom, dear congregants, As we gather on this auspicious occasion of Rosh Hashanah, we celebrate not only the Jewish New Year but also what is often referred to as the “Birthday of the world.”...
Eikev: Mindfully Eating Our Fill
One of my first classes in rabbinical school at AJR was “Contemplative Practice” with Rabbi Jill Hammer. One of the assignments had to do with “mindful eating,” where you take a small food item–perhaps...
Shoftim: Justice, Destruction and Harmony
Photo: Lawrence Barringer, Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, Bugwood.org licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. The spotted lantern fly has arrived in our area, and we’re being advised to squash them if we see...
VaEtchanan: Until His Final Breath
Photo Credit: flickr.com/photos/maltin75/6278446183 “Observe God’s laws and commandments, which I enjoin upon you this day, that it may go well with you and your children after you, and that you may long remain in...
Parshat Pinchas: Looking For The Good
Photo: COSV from Wikimedia Commons. Women Gathering Wood, South Sudan My friend Sylvia (who says I’m her favorite female rabbi) is almost 98–may she live and be well–and is often troubled by the harsher...
Shabbat for the Fourth of July
Photo credit: publicdomainpibtures.net Two hundred and 46 years ago, the Continental Congress approved the final wording of the Declaration of Independence, and in addition to stating a litany of grievances against tyrannical British...
Bekhukotai: What Do We Want From God?
The yearly Torah-reading cycle is a beautiful thing. Every week, when I look at the parashah for the upcoming Shabbat, I see something I hadn’t noticed before. I also the same words year-after-year, but...
Behar: Our Bodies, Ourselves, Our Land
This Shabbat we read parashat Behar, “on the mountain,” and from that mountain–Sinai–God gave Moses the commandments regarding Shmita and Yovel, the sabbatical and jubilee years, where the land was to lie fallow, not...
