A Different Kind Of Hanukkah
You all think you know the story of Hanukkah, don’t you? You think it’s about that little vial of oil that was only supposed to be enough to keep the temple menorah lit for one night and yet lasted for eight. Or perhaps you say, not so fast that’s the myth of the rabbis; the […]
Three Really Hard Incidents in Philadelphia This Week
Dear Friends, The reverberations and fallout from the October 7 massacre persist. Of course within Israel—victims and hostages and their families, soldiers and their families, and really every citizen of Israel experiencing their world turned upside down; for residents of the West Bank and Gaza, increased violence all around them, the death toll rising in […]
Pain, Heartbreak, and the Voices of our Parents
This week’s parashah is action packed. It begins with our ancestor Jacob preparing to meet his twin brother Esau for the first time since Jacob deceived their father Isaac and stole the sacred blessing from him; it also includes that seminal moment in Israelite history when Jacob wrestled with the divine figure and thus received […]
The Return of Hostages: Where Do We Go From Here?
Dear Friends, This has been both an inspiring and continuously heartbreaking week; the latter word—heartbreaking—I’ve been using so often lately as to put it in danger of becoming trite, and yet that is the effect of the images we see pouring out of Israel and Gaza week after week. I say inspiring because of the […]
Reflections on the Israel March in DC
Dear Friends, I joined over 290,000 people at the National Mall in Washington DC on Tuesday for the March for Israel, March to Free Hostages, and March Against Antisemitism. While I did not agree with everyone that was selected to be a speaker at the event, it felt deeply important to be there to contribute […]