I spent all of Yom Kippur last year in a hospice in Denver, Colorado. In an institution filled with people who were dying, one of whom was my mother. It was the most profound Yom Kippur experience I’ve ever had in my life; more than that, it was certainly the deepest spiritual experience I’ve...
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Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God, the Lord is One …Deuteronomy 6:4 These are probably the most familiar Hebrew words in the entire language. We are commanded to say these words in the morning when we get up, and we are commanded to say them when we...
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There are some prayers we say every day, and normally just zip by them without paying that much attention. But there is often a profound message, if we but pause to consider it. There is a passage in the Talmud that we recite every morning after saying the blessings for studying Torah: These are...
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Yom Kippur 5765 Rabbi Dr. Barry Leff “Your mission, Jim, should you choose to accept it…” When I was a kid, I would hear those words coming from the TV, and then sit on the edge of my seat waiting to hear what kind of difficult, no, impossible, mission was going to unfold over...
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We have all heard the saying “Man does not live by bread alone.” Where do we know those famous words from? Who said them? Even many Jews are under the impression that this is a somehow a Christian teaching. These words ARE found in the Christian Bible in the Gospel according to Matthew. When...
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How do you recover from the worst trauma imaginable, from the loss of loved ones and the destruction of what stood at the center of your faith in God? Last Sunday we observed the holiday of Tisha b’Av, the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av. Tisha b’Av commemorates many disasters that have befallen...
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