Be Happy, It’s Adar! How is it possible that we can be commanded to be happy on a given day? That on the first of Adar, two weeks from Purim, we should somehow manage to be joyful? The more we know of life, the more we are saddened. Global communication brings news of a friend’s … Continue reading
Shabbat Yitro: Seeing Requires Silence
On this Shabbat our parashat hashavua recounts the moment when our ancestors stood at the foot of Mt Sinai and underwent a transformative moment. Many have asked what exactly we saw and heard in that moment, when the earth shook and the shofar sounded and fire lit up the mountain. On this erev Shabbat I … Continue reading
Shabbat BeShalakh: Freedom to be Joyful, or Not
Finally, after 400 years of dreaming about a future that is not yet within our grasp, the time is now. All that seemed to be obstacles has fallen away; the door that leads away from enslavement to now is beckoning toward the commitment to what will be. Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh. Trust, HaShem tells Moshe, not … Continue reading
Shabbat Bo: Come, O Spring
Parashat Bo arrives at a moment that feels like the return of spring. The timing for the parashah in which we read of our redemption from slavery in Egypt, coinciding with a week in which we saw the beginning of the Biden-Harris Administration, seems singularly appropriate since Tu B’Shevat, our annual celebration of spring’s first … Continue reading
Shabbat Va’Era: Time to Grow Up
The words of HaShem came to Moshe: “I am The Source of That Which Was, Will Be, Is – your ancestors knew me as a Sheltering Mother; they did not come to this Awareness which is now Yours.” Exodus 6.2-3____________________________________________________ This period of time, the week that was and the one that will be, are … Continue reading
Shabbat Shemot: Listen and See that All Is One
we have met the enemy and they are us – cartoonist Walt Kellly in the comic strip Pogo What is the cause of uprisings? the seed of violence? what did we see on Wednesday in Washington D.C., and all spring and summer in Portland? Others will turn to political scientists and sociologists; to these sources … Continue reading
