The taste of matzah was still fresh on our lips as we began the  study of Acharei Mot this year. This gastronomic phenomenon was particularly pronounced for those who read Acharei Mot last Shabbat because they observe seven days of Passover, including...

The Torah portion for this week is Pesach (final day), which leads to the inevitable question: Just when is the final day of Pesach?  The Torah is clear: Pesach begins on the 15th day of Nisan and lasts seven days. Which sounds cut and dried, but only...

If you could envision the place you wanted to be in your life, what would that look like? Who would be around you? What would a day in that version of your life look like? What sort of person would you be?For most of us, having dreams and goals allows...

On Shabbat Hagadol, which immediately precedes Passover, we read from the Haftarah of Malachi in which God promises to send Elijah the prophet before the coming of the “great (gadol), awesome day of the Lord” (Malachi 3:23). On the night of the Passover...

Pull up a chair. I have a story to tell. I was traveling around Mount Ararat near the Armenian border on my way to Kurdistan just after the Turks released their grip on the ancient land. You will recognize Mount Ararat from the biblical account of Noah,...

By now, you would think we would be numb to it. Every day, across the globe, people die of gunshot wounds. In the United States, an average of 100 people a day are killed by guns, more than 36,000 each year. Hundreds more are shot and injured.  Perhaps...

I feel like I’m always walking around my house turning off lights in empty rooms. It bugs me to waste electricity, to waste money, lighting rooms unnecessarily. I do the same thing at my synagogue, too. But there’s one light at synagogue that never...

One of the most popular programs on television during the 1970s was “Happy Days,” a nostalgic comedy about the late 1950s and early 1960s. During a turbulent era (when have we not lived through a turbulent era?), “Happy Days” provided a romanticized...

When was the last time that you experienced God in the world? I experience God on the face of a stranger, in the beauty of the snow, in the intricacies of a flower. I know that the way I experience God in the world is different from the way you do.  We...

On the heels of the molten beast, we slipped. Make us a god, we said last week, because that man who led us out of Egypt, we don’t know what became of him (Exodus 32:1). Did we want a god, or did we want a leader? Rashi taught that we were confused;...

My first experience with this portion was 30 years ago when our eldest son became a bar mitzvah. Ki Tisa is found near the end of the  Book of Exodus. Half of Exodus is dedicated to the Mishkan, the Tent of Meeting or portable sanctuary of the wilderness.In...

Parashat Tetzavah forms the middle of a lengthy multiweek set of instructions given to the Israelites for the construction of God’s dwelling place. God speaks to Moses, and outlines in precise and sometimes difficult-to-follow language every possible...