By Rabbi James Stone Goodman
• Published July 16, 2020
Matot is the word for tribes in the opening verse. We have another word for tribe: shevet. Matei (singular) and shevet both signify a branch, a staff, part of a tree, how a branch becomes a tribe. I am thinking about this as I stoop to kiss the ground...
By Rabbi James Stone Goodman
• Published January 24, 2020
In the groups that I lead for Shalvah on Addiction and No Shande on mental health and mental illness, we are familiar with the subject of suicide. Whenever it comes up it tends to take over the meeting. The meeting is basically a teaching and a sharing,...
By Rabbi James Stone Goodman
• Published August 29, 2019
Beginning with the month of Elul, we are into the Days of Awe ascent. In the synagogue we read the messages of consolation from the prophet Isaiah, leaving the descent of the three weeks of sadness drawn now towards the heights of awe. Where we have...
BY DAVID BAUGHER, SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT
• Published October 19, 2018
Rabbi James Stone Goodman came to town soon after graduation from Hebrew Union College. “I was ordained in 1981,” said Goodman, 69, a Detroit native. “This was my first stop.”It has been a long one. Beginning at Congregation Shaare Emeth and...
By Rabbi James Stone Goodman
• Published July 26, 2018
I ran into one of the prophets at Schnucks. He was looking over the fresh fruit. Someone spotted him and he signed a cantaloupe with this: I love you with all my broken heart.Then he started to recite poetry. Three weeks I sat in sadness, he declaimed,...
BY RABBI JAMES STONE GOODMAN
• Published March 22, 2018
It starts with a command: Tzav. Same root as mitzvah. Here, though, there is an extra urgency. The voice of the Talmud came to me in my morning meditation. Extra urgency, Tzav, hurry! Do this thing.What thing? Lift up the ashes, thus says your Torah....
Address: c/o Congregation Neve Shalom, 6 Millstone Campus Drive, St. Louis, Mo. 63146 | Photo: 314-222-9864 | email: [email protected] James Stone GoodmanJewish Prison Outreach (JPO) provides educational and religious material to incarcerated...
Address: c/o Central Reform Congregation, 5020 Waterman Blvd., St. Louis, Mo. 63108 | Phone: 314-222-9864 | email: [email protected] James Stone Goodman, DirectorConvened by Rabbi James Stone Goodman, Jewish Attention to Mental Illness (JAMI...
By Rabbi James Stone Goodman
• Published March 22, 2017
I spent the year of 1976-77 as student in Jerusalem. There I was introduced to the oud, the double course, 10- or 11-string ancestor to the lute, the microtones that distinguish the music of the eastern Mediterranean articulate on the fretless neck of...
The Saul Brodsky Jewish Community Library will present the the Annual Morris and Ann Lazaroff Lecture: L’Oud and the Abstract Truth featuring Rabbi James Stone Goodman and Rabbi Zach Fredman, the Epichorus. The afternoon of unique music and storytelling,...
By Rabbi James Stone Goodman
• Published December 21, 2016
Sometimes I feel as if I am missing something in perspective in the radical now, the holy present that occupies my attention. The present is challenging enough to require my full attention, to be here, now. I don’t have the koyech (strength) to be anywhere...
By Rabbi James Stone Goodman, Congregation Neve Shalom
• Published November 30, 2016
These are the generations of Isaac.Isaac entreats God, and God is entreated. Same verb, different structure. It is one of the words we encounter in Torah that is considered prayer.The same root, transitive and reflexive. Isaac entreats God, and God is...
