Tomorrow is Thanksgiving – not the way we planned it… but still a great holiday. A few thoughts to get you off on the right foot. If your holiday will not be much fun and you already know that, try to change your own mind. Remember, this is just ONE YEAR, next year you can…
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I was touched by Rabbi Larry Milder‘s email to his congregation about this very difficult week in our country. I am sharing it with you. For those of us who are Jews, or another repressed minority, it is heartening to remember that we can and must protect the right to vote. Our strength is democracy….
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(Image from the SF Chronicle) Rabbi Chai Levy sent her congregation, Netivot Shalom, this email as we begin Sukkot and it spoke to my heart. Sukkot is my favorite holiday and I have to forgo it this year – at least in the ways I usually celebrate. There’s a Talmudic debate about the biblical mitzvah…
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One rabbi’s message to her congregation about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Shanah Tovah! Just before Rosh Hashanah, we heard the news of the death of a modern Jewish hero, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She lived her life as a proud Jewish woman. Justice Ginsburg worked tirelessly, throughout her career, for gender equality and women’s rights. Having faced sexism…
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Rabbi Annette Koch‘s drash (teaching) on this week’s Torah portion, Shoftim, brings ancient truths to modern conditions. Rabbi Koch is the spiritual leader of Temple Israel in Alameda. When my father spoke about the horrors of being a prisoner in a Russian forced labor camp on the Finnish-Russian border during World War II, he…
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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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