Dear Friends, Today is Lag Ba’Omer, a very uncreatively-named Jewish holiday (Lag or ל״ג is simply the way to write 33 in Hebrew), which falls on the 33rd day of the Omer– the time that bridges the divide between Pesach and Shavu’ot. Whereas many Jews observe a variety of mourning customs during the Omer (no […]
Dear Friends, It may have escaped your attention with all the (other) horrible news these days, but one of the strangest recent developments is that Steve Bannon, former advisor and key strategist of the Trump campaign, has recently taken up residence in a remote Italian monastery. This is not, unfortunately, a result of him seeing […]
Dear Friends, I’m sure many of you will agree: there are many confusing and often jarring aspects of contemporary Israeli society and culture. Yet, personally, I think none is stranger than the extreme switch between the two chief days of the secular calendar: Yom haZikaron and Yom haAtzma’ut. Today (Wed night-Thur night) is Yom haAtzma’ut […]
Dear Friends, This week marks the first anniversary of “A Thought for Thursday”. I can’t believe it’s been a year already! As always, I welcome any feedback, questions, reviews, or suggestions for topics! Thanks for your support and for the many people who have come up to me and written to me to share that […]
Dear Friends, With the horrifying news coming out of Sri Lanka over Pesach, we find ourselves with yet another atrocity perpetrated in the name of ideology over which to grieve. With over 300 killed in at least three locations, this horrifying attack on Sri Lanka by a relatively unknown Islamist group in the country is […]
Dear Friends, The images which leave an impression on us aren’t always the ones we expect. A black field, with an uneven yellow-orange halo surrounding a fuzzy black centre doesn’t sound like a particularly moving visual stimulus. Yet, the image (below), which was released yesterday, is a huge step forward for our understanding of the […]
Dear Friends, Believe it or not, we are only a little more than two weeks away from the start of Pesach! Timed this year to coincide with a different sort of exit (or not), the Exodus from Egypt is the impetus for our biggest festival. Yet, for many, observance of Pesach has been mired in […]
Dear Friends, There’s a lot of things I love doing being a rabbi– but perhaps chief among them is helping to make new Jews through teaching and facilitating conversions. This past Tuesday was a milestone for me in this regard, as I had the pleasure to sit, for the first time, on a Beit Din […]
Dear Friends, Forgive the short dispatch today! As it is Purim, I have had the immense pleasure of spending most of the day delivering the Mishlo’ach Manot bags made by Cheder to a variety of you. This particular activity is immensely fun– an experience I can only guess compares to that of Santa’s theoretical elves. […]
Dear Friends, As you surely know, Purim is nearly upon us! Many find it hard to believe that Purim is a legitimate Jewish holiday– as it seems to be so much at odds with the somber, historicised, self-flagellating tone which many ascribe to Jewish holiday observance. In contrast, Purim is all about inversion: the weak […]