How To Wrestle with God
What a joy to be celebrating Noah Schindler becoming Bar Mitzvah with you all. Noah’s Torah portion is vayishlach, and while of course all 54 Torah portions are equally sacred, there is something pretty special about this one, because it’s the one that gives us our name—Yisrael, Israel. Noah’s portion contains the etymology, the origin story, […]
How Not To Measure Our Self-Worth | Investigating Our Own True Motivations
Last week, we celebrated the Bat Mitzvah of Sarah Tobacman. Sarah’s parashah (Torah portion) was Vayetze a phrase which literally translates to “he left,” as in Jacob, our ancestor, left his hometown of Be’er Sheva—fled it, is more accurate—after purloining the patriarchal blessing of his father Isaac, a blessing which had been intended for Jacob’s slightly older twin brother […]
The balance between nurturing our roots, and being entangled in them
Two weeks ago on November 19, we celebrated the Bar Mitzvah of Felix Edelman. Felix’s parashah (Torah portion) was Chayei Sara, a phrase which literally translates to “the life of Sara,” Sara being the foremost matriarch of the Jewish people. The parashah opens with Sara’s life coming to an end, her husband Abraham grieving her, and then him searching for […]
Comfort in the Unknown, Faith in the Other
When we celebrate a Bar Mitzvah in our synagogue community, we like to offer, in this weekly email a summary of the teaching offered by the young person in our community who celebrated becoming Bar Mitzvah. This past week it was Xander Segal, who, according to his mother Verna, is the fourth generation in his family to […]
The Sacredness of Our Democracy • Rising Antisemitism
I have long loved election day. The act of casting one’s vote is a truly sacred one to me. Never mind that in Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania just elected its second Jewish governor in the 21st century (who shares a high school alma mater with my wife, no less: suburban Philadelphia’s pluralistic Jewish secondary day school, Jack M. […]