Dear Friends, As an American, there’s lots about British culture that I’ve had the pleasure of picking up these last few years. Unique words, different turns of phrase, some unnecessarily complicated spellings, and also whole cultural phenomena which are new to me. One which falls into the last category is the ‘hustings.’ A […]
Dear Friends, “We are part of something greater: a vast web of existence constantly expanding and evolving. When we gaze at the nighttime sky, we can ponder that we are made of elements forged within stars, out of particles born in the big bang […] Beyond any star or galaxy we will ever identify lies the […]
Dear Friends, This week in the Torah, as we zoom in post-Flood onto Abraham and his family, we get a story that, to its first listeners, would have been remarkably strange. Our ancestors who first recorded and told the tales of the Torah were well acquainted with mythological epics about heroes encountering the gods. […]
Dear Friends, I want to begin today with a few, inherently incomplete, ‘thank you’s– Thank you to all of you who joined us and brought your whole selves to the spiritual work of teshuvah over the last ten days. Thank you to all of our service leaders, torah-readers, haftarah-readers, shofar-blowers, chair setter-uppers, handout-printers, childrens service-takers, floor-sweepers, meeters-and-greeters, […]
Dear Friends, It was such a pleasure to see so many of you over Rosh haShanah! Approaching Yom Kippur next week, I want to wish everyone a g’mar ḥatimah tovah– a good conclusion to your sealing in the Book of Life. For those who asked if my Rosh haShanah sermons would be online- you should […]
Dear Friends, Every year, Professor Danny Matt, a scholar at Berkeley and the translator of the Zohar into English, does all self-respecting nerdy Jews a big favour: he combs through the Tanakh to find verses which add up to the number of the new Hebrew year. Since any word can also be read as a […]
Dear Friends, When you spend any extended time living in Israel, one of the first Hebrew phrases you pick up is the oft-used and little-understood, Selichah! Usually used in a series of staccato repetitions (“Selichah, selichah, selichah!”), this word is ubiquitous on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv alike. The word (סליחה) literally means […]
Dear Friends, It’s not every day you get uplifting political news– especially these days. Yet, yesterday something happened which, to me at least, signals that things aren’t all that bad. A few weeks ago, thanks to the braggadocio of Italy’s Foreign Minister Matteo Salvini, the Italian parliament looked as though it would be the first one in […]
Dear Friends, It’s astounding to me how quick the seasons seem to change when the school term begins again. It could be mid-June or late-November but I’d swear the official switch to Autumn-feeling™️ happens the week that school returns. Though the weather is still lovely, I can’t help but crave a pumpkin spice latte and start […]
Dear Friends, Arguably, no one loves acronyms more than the Jews. The further you get into traditional Jewish texts (especially rabbinic ones) the more that the words dissolve into endless (and often, senseless) acronyms. I would imagine that I’m not alone among people who have spent time in a Beit Midrash in having devoted a […]