This week’s parashah finds Jacob leaving home, going to a new community and creating family there. The resonance is obvious here for so many of us, for whom it is natural to expect to create our families and our future in a place different from the one in which we grew up. For Jacob, aContinue reading “Shabbat VaYetze: Give Me Children Or I Will Die”
Monthly Archives: November 2017
Shabbat Toldot: Trust, Despite Everything
In parashat Toldot we read of the birth of the twins Esau and Jacob, born to Rebekah and Isaac after years of trying to get pregnant, and much frustration and difficulty. The family that is created when the children are safely born seems to thrive: their parents succeed in helping their boys to find forContinue reading “Shabbat Toldot: Trust, Despite Everything”
Shabbat Hayye Sarah: Mourning the Dead
Once again, gun violence leaves us breathless, and leaves some of us dead. We have reached a point in our nation where, when we see an American flag at half-mast, it is no longer clear to us why. There is so much death around us, so many incidences of murder by gun. And once againContinue reading “Shabbat Hayye Sarah: Mourning the Dead”
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 