Inter-generationality is the major theme of this week’s Torah reading, Chayei Sarah.  The narrative begins with the death and burial of our matriarch, Sarah.  It then continues highlighting the marriage of Isaac and Rebeccah, the inheritors of the...

The natural desire to make meaning of our world caused human beings to develop hundreds of origin stories, each unique to the culture and people who created them.The Babylonian origin story describes a world that emerged out of utter chaos, with the gods...

I was blessed to grow up in an environment that took Jewish tradition seriously. Shabbat and festivals were welcomed with great anticipation and we felt a deep and palpable sense of the rhythms and cycles of living lives that were sanctified and sacred. No...

The mood swing from Yom Kippur to Sukkot is among the most dramatic of Jewish transitions. From sobriety to celebration, from awe-struck fear to total joy, from fasting to feasting, we re-engage with the world beyond the walls of synagogue, remembering...

So you got fat [Deut. 32:15], G*d would have suckled you with honey from a rock and oil from a flinty stone butter of cattle milk or sheep fat of lambs, but you became thick and you kicked. Of course, we will get fat if we eat like that. The honey alone...

Devarim - Chapter 26: 1: When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, 2: You shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land that the Lord your God...

“See, behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse.” (Sefer Devarim, Chapter 11, Verse 26)The brilliant and iconoclastic Hassidic Master, Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav (1772-1810), shares an insightful and powerful interpretation of the opening...

Carl Sagan once said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” In other words, none of us have ever done anything by ourselves.  Anything that we manage to achieve is possible only because we find ourselves...

“To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I was in a rabbinical school class when I first heard this adage. The saying was proffered by a professor as a working definition of Prophecy in the Hebrew Bible — or TaNaK (an acronym for...

The last book of the Torah is a multilayered narrative opening with an experienced Moses reminding a new generation of Israelites about the challenges their parents faced as they left a narrow place of ancient Egyptian servitude. The Book of Deuteronomy...

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...

Who doesn’t think their situation is paramount? My past few weeks have been as exciting and exhausting as one can imagine, moving with three young boys during a pandemic. As we have begun to settle into our splendid new home and Jewish community here...