At a wedding last night the conversation turned to the fact that tonight, June 30th, I ascend the pulpit for my new position as rabbi at Beth Elohim.
“What are your early priorities?” someone asked.
Off the top of my head I said, “You know I’ve been thinking alot about the issue of maintenance and security […]
I know I’ve been a big advocate of Jews finding a greater sense of ease with the reality that we live in an era of hightened religious discourse in politics, but I have to admit a certain queasiness at reading Barack Obama’s words, delivered yesterday in DC’s National City Christian Church.
When one of the […]
In talking about Onan, the infamous Biblical self-satisfier, Mel Brooks’ Two Thousand and Thirteen Year Old Man is asked by Carl Reiner if he was ostracized for his actions. “Well, he was circumcised…”
It’s a Yogi Berra like malapropism that always makes me laugh.
We don’t really have the social construct of ostracization an enforceable category […]
Last Sunday afternoon the family went to walk around the Museum of Natural History, which is always good, clean fun. Stuffed penguins and whales can go a long way on a restless weekend. And confronting dioramas of lost cultures is always a bittersweet experience for Jews. The question lurks beneath the surface: […]
Yossi Sarid got it right in this Week End edition of Haaretz when he essentially says that the days are over in which the Israeli military gets to play the morality card in defense of itself when innocent civilians are killed. Difficult as it may be for us Zionists to accept this, it is […]
Moving fully into geek mode, I share with you a couple quick thoughts on having finally read Jim Collins Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. This book was given to me by a mentor back a couple years ago, part of an overall movement among Jewish […]
In the same week that news began to trickle along email from a variety of childhood friends that one of our own had been stricken with a particularly virulent form of cancer, another email announced the death by overdose of a different classmate.
In my high school class alone (one of the best schools in the […]
No dust-up but some pretty interesting feedback on yesterday’s post regarding getting the men involved and David raises an challenge as to whether or not it’s appropriate to use less aspirational motivations (like pride, stature, feeling smart) to get people into studying Torah or involving themselves in Jewish life.
It’s a good question that the pious […]
Beneath the surface of change are currents of anxiety and anticipation for what will be in the present and the future. I notice this more and more with conversations that I have with older leaders in the congregation as we chart out a path into the next phase of the community’s growth.
Yesterday, some of […]
One of the demographic jewels of Brooklyn Jews (a twenty something activist) wrote over the weekend to say that she really liked the davenning at another Brooklyn shul but that she still wants to be active with us in this new endeavor of moving into a synagogue on the level of social action.
I responded quickly […]