Purim & Yom HaKip-Purim — Two Holidays of Compassion
I confess, I struggle a lot with the holiday whose eve we have reached: the holiday of Purim — the holiday that celebrates the story of Esther, the Jewish Queen, who upends the plan of the murderous Haman, who, in the ancient persian court, sought to have all the Jews killed after he was offended […]
The Sacred Art of Listening
When I introduce the shema, that central call of Jewish tradition, I often say it is the call to listen—to listen to the one-ness that underlies and connects all of life. In some ways, that understates the case for the centrality of the act of listening in Jewish tradition. My teacher Barbara Breitman writes that […]
What does Judaism say about the afterlife?
I am so glad we were able to have a scholar-in-residence last Shabbat on the topic of Jewish beliefs in the afterlife. Here is what I shared on Friday night to help frame our learning: This need sparked for me at a funeral I officiated for a congregant’s elderly father a few years ago. At […]
The Hidden God
The other night I was reading my four and a half year old daughter Lila a bedtime story. We have a routine that she gets to watch two music videos and read three stories before bed (I spoil her, I know). So we’re on our fifth and final piece of content for the evening when […]
Listening at Sinai
Last week’s Torah portion was Parashat Yitro, the portion in which the Israelites receive the revelation of Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. Here at Society Hill Synagogue we spoke last Saturday morning about what the nature of that revelation was—what did the people hear as they stood there at the foot of the mountain? A […]