I am blessed to be writing this week’s column from Israel, where I have been privileged to take part in Kivunim, a program of the JCC Association’s Mandel Center for Jewish Education and Mandel Center for Excellence in Leadership and Management. Kivunim means “pathways” or “directions” in He…
This week our community gathered to recognize the third anniversary of the horrors of October 7, 2023. My opening words of welcome to the gathering were a confession: “I am Jewish, and I am an unapologetic Zionist!”
Before I could formally welcome and thank everyone in attendance, our local…
The hardest part of Simchat Torah is not the dancing. It's the stepping up.
Every year, someone sits in the back, arms crossed, unsure whether they should join; whether they belong. Maybe they're out of practice. Maybe they don't know which customs this congregation follows. Suddenly a hand…
Sukkot is called z'man simchateinu (the season of our joy), the one festival the Torah explicitly commands us to celebrate with happiness. Yet look closely at the haftarot we read on its first two days, and the picture is anything but simple celebration.
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On the first day, we read from …
I found myself this week in a conversation with a non-Jewish community leader who came to me with a sincere question: “How do people not see the hatred?” She was struggling to reconcile two things happening at once. Macklemore removed from Ed Sheeran's music tour following his hateful anti-I…
