What is Shemini Atzeret? I can’t imagine how many Jews have asked that question and are still left wondering! Here’s a bit of an explanation/interpretation. Shemini Atzeret is a festival that follows immediately on the heels of Sukkot, one of the 3 major festivals of Jewish tradition. Because Shemini Atzeret starts just as Sukkot […]
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Sukkot, Music to My Ears
I’m glad I don’t have to choose a favorite holiday. I can love Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I can love Shavuot and Sukkot. But every year, when Sukkot arrives, it is literally, music to my ears. When I think of Sukkot I think of beautiful weather. I think of hanging out in a Sukkah with family and friends. I […]
What’s it like to be a rabbi?
I have a cherished colleague. Her name is Dr. M. Cathy Harmon-Christian. She teaches in the theology department at Marist. Among other things, she and I have a chavruta, a study-based friendship. It’s a lot of fun. An offshoot of that chavruta is that every so often she’ll send along a question asked by her students. “What’s […]
An Incomplete Meditation on Connectedness
An Incomplete Meditation on Connectedness I am connected to this computer to this couch to the sounds of the white noise machines in my kids’ rooms being carried through the speaker of our video monitor to the buzzer on the drying machine and the great folding that awaits to […]
Predictions for 5778
Here are some predictions for 5778. I’m pretty confident they’ll come to pass. 5778 will be a year of… radical love and radical hatred profound peace and profound violence deep connection and deep alienation wisdom and folly clarity and ambiguity health and sickness laughter and tears life and death progress and decline momentum and […]
Rise Up Baltimore!
When my colleague, Rabbi Sarah Marion, from Oheb Shalom in Baltimore reached out and asked for the music to Rise Up I was delighted. At the same time, I wondered if there’d truly be enough time before Rosh Hashanah to rehearse the song with their local church partner and pull it off. Lo and behold, […]