Rabbi Lane Steinger, Rabbi Emeritus, Shir Hadash Reconstructionist Community
• Published October 23, 2023
About a week before a Shabbat or Yom Tov, I peruse the Torah Portion for that particular occasion. Generally, I focus on one or two parts of the Parashah, into which I delve more deeply. When Shabbat Lekh L’kha approaches, I go over the Portion from...
CANTOR AND RABBI RON EICHAKER
• Published October 12, 2023
Starting this week, I am leading a study of a course offered at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill by professor Joseph Lam titled “Creation Stories of the Ancient World.”
At the same time, we are beginning the reading and study...
By Rabbi Brigitte Rosenberg
• Published October 5, 2023
This week we joyously celebrate the bounty of our lives during the festival of Sukkot. Even though most of us are not farmers, we think about the cycles of nature and, more specifically, the harvest season.
If we were farmers, while focusing on the...
Is it possible to change? Can we actually make the world, or others, or even ourselves better?
A well-known folktale from our Jewish tradition tells of a king who had a wayward son. In anger and frustration, the king banishes his son from the kingdom....
Philip Roth was a controversial Jewish author, to say the least. I enjoyed reading his writing, and one of his books, in particular, was very impactful in my youth. It was the collection of short stories entitled “Goodbye Columbus.”
The title...
When you think about earlier eras in American history, are you nostalgic, or are you relieved to be living today? It’s a generally conservative impulse to feel like life was better in some imagined or remembered past. And it’s a generally progressive...
I recently returned from leading a delegation of 19 students from Washington University in St. Louis to Israel to learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This fact-finding mission, called the Campus Leaders Israel Experience, travels through...
By RABBI ELIZABETH HERSH
• Published August 10, 2023
[Editor’s note: This d’var Torah was originally published in 2021.]
From “Stories for Public Speakers,” compiled and edited by Morris Mandel: “A man was marooned on an island for years. One day, he saw a ship in the distance and signaled...
On a hard and arduous journey, one plagued by hunger, thirst, conflict and fear, it can be difficult to keep the end in mind. This is especially true of a 40-year journey during which an entire generation lost both the chance to see the destination and...
My earliest memory of prayer is my mother, of blessed memory, tucking me into bed with a kiss and the words of the Shema. To say that God is One, to know that this declaration of faith embraced me in the circle of love and belief of all Jewish souls who...
CANTOR-RABBI RON EICHAKER
• Published July 20, 2023
Noted Torah commentator Robert Adler observed that the Book of Deuteronomy (D’varim) is “… the most sustained deployment of rhetoric in the Torah.” D’varim (sayings or speeches), by virtue of its root association, sets the tone for a series...
By Rabbi Brigitte Rosenberg
• Published July 13, 2023
Amid this week’s double parashah, Matot-Massei, there are 49 verses, a lot of detail, describing the 42 journeys of the Jewish people through the desert, to the Land of Israel. It is almost like reading the journal of an explorer, with specific details...
