In our Torah portion, B’midbar, we find the Children of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai. In fact, our Hebrew name for the portion has a different meaning than that of the English.  In Hebrew, B’midbar refers to the “Wilderness” (or desert),...

In a world in which we value action, speed, productivity and rapid-fire response, perhaps the most incredible thing to ask of a person is to simply stop.Yet, that is exactly what the Torah commands us to do.In this week’s Torah portion, we are commanded...

Emor tells us: “These are My fixed times; times set aside for Me, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions for convocation.”Emor is translated as “saying.”   The word is mentioned more than 20 times in the portion. God spoke to Moses, saying,...

In his most famous work, “The Dybbuk,” Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport, the Jewish Russian author who wrote under the pseudonym of S. Ansky, created a character named Rabbi Azriel, who taught the following with regard to the holy confluence of time, person,...

Passover is about relationships.  Over and over, the Torah expresses the Passover Seder in intergenerationally related terms, such as:  “When your child shall ask you, ‘What is this service’ ” and, “And you shall say to them, ‘With a strong...

We get it: Most Jewish families don’t yearn to make their Passover seders longer.But there’s an entire world of seder upgrades and supplements out there providing myriad creative ways to freshen up the age-old tale of the Jews’ liberation from slavery...

“Our tale begins in degradation and ends in praise.”This is more or less the entire original seder “script” outlined in the Mishnah nearly 2,000 years ago. It outlines not only the story of Exodus, but also a way of looking at Jewish and divine...

Every spring, Jewish people across the globe throw out their leavened bread and begin a week of eating matzah, matzah, and more matzah. Known as Passover, this Jewish holiday is when friends, family and members of the St. Louis community gather for seders.Some...

We conclude this week with a special Shabbat, Shabbat Ha-gadol/The Great Sabbath, the Shabbat that precedes Passover.The name Shabbat Ha-gadol is derived from Malachi 3:4-4:24, the Haftarah, or reading from the Prophets, for this Shabbat, which declares,...

Centuries of religious intolerance and oppression forced generation upon generation of our ancestors to flee their lands in search of some sanctuary in the Diaspora where they could live in peace as Jews. And along the way, they developed unique cuisines...

In my teens, when I first started thinking of becoming a rabbi, I spent a summer shadowing several rabbis in St. Louis to get a sense of what they did every day and to try and imagine whether I could ever stand in their shoes. By the end of the summer,...