What exactly is a miracle?
I’m writing to wish you all a healthy and happy Hanukkah season, this Festival of Lights, and to share with you some reflections that I offered this past Shabbat on the question: what is a nes — Hebrew for miracle? What do we mean when we invoke the existence of miracles on Hanukkah and when […]
It’s Just Us
We need your help. When I first applied to rabbinical school back in 2013, operating as I was from something of the periphery of the Jewish community, I did not imagine that, post-rabbinical school, I would be the rabbi of a synagogue. The conventional wisdom at the time (and in some places this is still […]
The Holiness in the Pang of Regret
I am very excited that this week we are welcoming Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum to our community as Scholar-in-Residence. To me, she is a teacher, role model, and friend. Her arrival comes on the heels of her being named this week to the BBC’s 100 Women: the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women from […]
Rabbi Kleinbaum on Resilience; Exploring Memory in the Amidah
First of all, I want to make sure you mark your calendars for the Shabbat of Friday evening, December 6 and Saturday morning, December 7, when a friend and teacher of mine, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, will be the Scholar-in-Residence at Society Hill Synagogue. Rabbi Kleinbaum was CBST’s first staff member, brought in when the community […]
The Election and Our Shared Resilience
As I’ve written about before, to be Jewish, to be in relationship to the Jewish people, entails a Jewish identity that is concerned not exclusively with traditionally “religious” considerations, but with the grand sweep of history, too: with the way in which the Jewish people and the loved ones in relationship with them find themselves […]