Dear Friends, I am a child of refugees. With Auschwitz and forced labor behind them, my parents languished for two years in a Displaced Refugee camp in Stuttgart, Germany. Visas were hard to come by. Neither of my parents had a learned skill. Neither had finished high school amidst the disruption of war. Such visas…
Torah: Va’Era – Our Torah finds us in bondage. Moses and Aaron appear before the powerful ruler and warn of impending plaques. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel speaking in Chicago in 1963 at a conference on “Religion and Race,” began: ”At the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses. Moses’ words were:…
Torah: Shemot – “And a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8). This week’s Torah reading begins the Exodus account. The rabbis wonder how the new king could not have known Joseph’s achievements on behalf of Egypt. Mishnat Rabbi Eliezer, composed during the first two centuries of the common era, states that Pharaoh…
Torah: Va’Yigash- What does it take to be a tzaddik, a righteous person? Joseph is distinctly called ha’tzaddik, the righteous one, by the sages of the Talmud (Yoma 35b). They primarily point to Joseph’s overcoming the sexual advances of his employer Potiphar’s wife and emphasize that his self-restraint revealed his exemplary character. Elie Wiesel points…
Huston Smith (2009) Huston Smith, who died at the age of 97 this past Friday in Berkeley, was a towering, spiritual sage. My visits with him endure as gifts of spiritual wisdom and the modeling of genuine goodness. Professor Smith was a trailblazing explorer of religions from the inside, stating, “If we take the world’s enduring…
Aleppo Falls- Tragic images of families leaving Aleppo are a reminder that “Never Again” remains an unfilled longing. As Elie Wiesel taught, “… True, we are often too weak to stop injustices; but the least we can do is to protest against them. True, we are too poor to eliminate hunger; but in feeding one…
Did you ever consider the Jewish origins of New Year’s? For Jews the eighth day after the birth of a son is brit milah, the festive welcome into covenant and community. The Jewish origin of New Year’s celebration often goes unnoticed, but it is there. Although Christians differ on the date of Christmas, so that for Orthodox Christians the date is January…
“The Right to be Different” Sages of the Talmud asked Mai Hanukkah? What is Hanukkah? It is a surprising question. For the question, arising in the context of a discussion on Shabbat wicks, occurred well over a hundred years after the Maccabee’s successful revolt. In response, the rabbis introduce the miracle of the oil that lasted for eight days. In more contemporaneous accounts of…
Va’Yishlach What does it mean to be “the children of Israel,” as in Congregation B’nai Israel? In this week’s Torah reading, an angel blesses Jacob with that new name. Jacob, Ya’akov, means circumventer. As his name conveys, he has acted with deception in obtaining the first-born blessing from his blind father instead of Esau, the first-born twin. Now on the night before…
Torah: What is the origin and meaning of the word Jew? It comes from Judah, the largest tribe during the Second Temple. Our name conveys qualities of who we are as a people. Leah, Judah’s mother, felt neglected by her husband, who was also married to her younger, more beloved sister, Rachel. Leah’s named her first three sons to fill in a…