I have a friend who plays the organ at an East Bay church and the piano at an East Bay synagogue. He marveled at how quickly the synagogue jumped into cyberspace. His church is still struggling with their website. Over the centuries Jews have learned to act fast. Make it work. There’s the joke that…
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(Image is of Temple Isaiah in Lafayette in their outdoor sanctuary in 2016. They currently have NO PLANS to have services here or in their building. You may join them online.) Can we have Jewish religious services out of doors? Several local synagogues have been using Rabbi Jacob Blumenthal’s Jewish values statement to guide their…
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When I was a kid I would ask my dad how to spell a word. He replied, “Look it up in the dictionary.” Exasperated I said, “If I knew how to spell it I COULD look it up!” Being clueless may be your starting point. But what you DO know is that you want to…
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(This first appeared in my Mixed and Matched column in the J-weekly) Dear Dawn: After I formally prepared for more than a year, my beit din and mikvah were going to be scheduled for this spring. Now they are postponed because of the shutdown. I’m grateful for many things, and I continue to study. At the…
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Thursday morning I got up early for a 7am virtual bat mitzvah. Many years ago a young woman went through some of my classes and decided to convert. I connected her to a rabbi. She became a Jew. In a few years she met a man and fell in love. He wasn’t Jewish so we…
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I have struggled with how to write to all of you. Many of us are in multiracial families; those who are not, still have black and brown friends. As a white person I am horrified and yet aware that it is a luxury to be horrified when this is routine for black people. So how…
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