Holidays

God loves you. But I don’t blame you if you don’t know it.  Most rabbis forget to point this out to their congregations.  I did a Google search on the phrase “God loves you.”  840,000 hits, and all the ones that come out on the first few pages are from Christian sites, mostly citing...
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Today is the great Day of Judgment. Our prayers today reflect a teaching from the Talmud that tells us that God has two books open today, the Book of Life and the Book of Death. The totally righteous—those who have all assets and no debts, all mitzvot and no sins—go straight into the Book...
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In these days leading up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, our tradition tells us we should be taking stock.  We should try to spend a little time each day in "cheshbon hanefesh," taking an accounting of the soul, evaluating our past year to see where we should focus our attentions to better ourselves....
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Every Shabbat during the Torah service when we bring the Torah out of the ark we sing "Ki Mitzion Tatzei Torah," for Torah shall go forth from Zion, which is quote from Isaiah 2:3. So I couldn't help but think of that phrase as I was carrying a Torah with me TO Jerusalem.  A...
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Technorati Tags: Shavuot, faith Click Here to go straight to the sermon Shavuot is called zeman matan Torateinu, the time of the giving of our Torah.   Why don’t we call it zeman kibalnu Torateinu, the time when we accepted the Torah? Years ago, some of the shtetls in Eastern Europe were too small...
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In the midst of a whole bunch of stuff about different kinds of ritual impurity, this week’s Torah reading has a commandment which stands out like a beacon from amongst all the descriptions of emissions and skin disease: “And in the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.” That’s all it...
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