And while you’re in the Tikkun Olam Shabbat mood and if you live here in Brooklyn, take a moment on Monday and support Streetsblog’s efforts to let Brooklyn Boro President Marty Markowitz know how you feel about the Department of Transportation’s plans for Ninth Street.
On Wednesday this week, while walking my three kids to school, […]
Now here would be a classic example of where religion and politics mix quite well in order to make an essential point to various communities that one hopes will embrace the political agenda put forth.
Mayor Mike Bloomberg went yesterday to sell his new transportation plan and said to a conference of ministers at the Bethel […]
This is a special Shabbat reserved for those of you with mommy and daddy issues.
From Kedoshim (Leviticus 19), the Eternal says, “Every person should revere his mother and father and you should keep my Shabbat, I am the Eternal your God.”
This one simple line, so seemingly uncomplex, gives rise to a variety of questions. […]
Special thanks to Josh Malamy for sending along this gem from Nina Simone.
In the first Shabbat after this year’s Israel Independence Day, let us wish you a Sweet Shabbat.
There’s a first time for everything and today was my first pastoral visit to Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital on the City’s Upper East Side to visit a child in cancer treatment.
I was there to see a neighborhood child and son of dear friends who has been diagnosed with an advanced neuroblastoma, an aggressive cancer that […]
When I was in rabbinical school, a graduate student friend had just returned from Jerusalem where she was doing research.
What was your favorite part of the summer? I asked.
Drinking coffee with Aharon Appelfeld, she answered.
Ever since then, which was about 14 years ago, I have been a fan of this extraordinary writer. And with […]
Jake Siegel, a young man who grew up at Beth Elohim who is serving in Iraq right now, lost two men in battle last week.
SGT Joshua Schmit and SGT Brandon Wallace.
Brandon was buried this past weekend in Missouri and Joshua will be buried tomorrow in his home state of Minnesota. You can send flowers […]
Cleaning up one section of my office in preparation for the week, I came across the pages upon pages of names of Holocaust victims that we had read for Yom Ha Shoah. I gathered them in a neat pile and returned them to the large manilla envelope from whence they came.
Now what?
Where do they […]
I remember first seeing Hebrew as a kid, wanting to learn it, but then not really getting the chance to do so until I got to Madison as a college student. The advice I got from friends at the time was to just force myself to memorize the Alef-Bet in one sitting, so I […]
Whew.
Tough days.
Jews fighting among themselves in Israel (and on this blog) while Baghdad burns; Virginia suffers; the Attorney General presides over the last gasps of his career, a living example of this bankrupt administration; and the Supreme Court opens up the first real controversy of the 2008 campaign by banning late term abortion.
It’s Shabbat. […]