What Does it Mean to Be “Redeemed”?
I wanted to begin by sharing with you the d’var torah (Torah-based teaching) I offered this past Friday night at Shabbat services, something that I do most every Friday night mixed into our musically-infused service, which is always followed by a community dinner and always preceded by wine and cheese. We welcome you to join us whenever […]
The “Uniquely-American Problem”
One core element of freedom, by any definition, is the freedom to not be in perpetual fear for one’s safety and the safety of one’s loved ones. The week-in-week-out—often day-in-day-out—episodes off mass gun violence we’ve seen in this country so far this year, capped off by two heartbreaking incidents of mass murder in Asian-American communities in California […]
Cries for Help Can Help: How We Shape Our Vessels
This week’s parasha [Torah portion], is shemot, the first portion of the Book of Exodus. The book begins by letting us know that the individual family with whom we became deeply acquainted in the Book of Bereshit, the Book of Genesis, has now blossomed into a people, an am, a nation, albeit one that finds itself in Egypt, thanks to our […]
Nose to the Grindstone/Head to the Stars • the Love of Grandparents
This week’s parasha is vayehi. “He lived.” Jacob lived seventeen years in the land of Egypt, the Torah portion tells us, after he had migrated there with the rest of his family to be reunited with Joseph—Joseph the eldest son of Jacob’s beloved late wife Rachel, Joseph whom Jacob thought had been killed many years ago, having been […]
Shame as a vessel for transformation?
At this past week’s Torah discussion, we discussed a heavy topic: shame. It came up in the context of the week’s parashah (Torah portion), Vayigash, meaning, “he approached.” The older brother Judah approached the younger brother Joseph, decades after Joseph’s older brother’s had sold him to a wandering caravan of traders descending to Egypt, so loathed […]