We are coming up on the traditional time for celebrating the giving of the Ten Dibrot or utterances (usually translated as commandments). Naturally, much has been written about these instructions, utterances, mitzvot (many names because they are not well understood at all) as we struggle to pattern our lives with something that is clearly important [...]
Read More »
If your mother has never seen your face — if you have never had a face to be seen — if, in a sense, you have never been born — do you have a mother? If your mother has always called you “son,” can you ever really become her daughter? For most of my life, [...]
Read More »
70th in shul The day before his 70th birthday on Feb. 12, Ellis Friedman led the Shacharit and Musaf services and chanted the Maftir (Torah reading before the Haftorah) at Congregation Anshei Israel’s Shabbat morning service. His wife, Irene, gave the D’var Torah. Members of their havurah — Vivien and Jacques Gerstenfeld, Barbara and Martin [...]
Read More »
One of my favorite stories of my grandfather involves driving home from a Dodgers game. Dodger Stadium is located adjacent to downtown Los Angeles. Even when a game ends late in the evening there’s traffic from the stadium, plus regular evening traffic downtown. In his later years, my grandfather’s sight was failing so whenever we [...]
Read More »
The state of Israel,” “Israel independence,” “the Israel Defense Forces,” “the prime minister of Israel” … it seems, nowadays, we tend to take all those for granted. We refer to the existence of a Jewish state as a solid fact. Young Jewish adults are focused on the Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the perspective of [...]
Read More »
Each year on the holiday of Pesach some 500 Jewish students join my wife, family and me for the Passover Seders. It is an extraordinary scene! Who would have imagined that on a college campus where the challenges to Jewish identity and practice are many, a place where students for the first time in their [...]
Read More » The month of Adar is here, “Mishenichnas Adar marbin b’simcha!” — It’s Adar, be happy! The month of Adar is considered the month of joy in Jewish tradition. As my grandmother used to say, “That’s the way we are; you need to tell us to be happy.” It seems that happiness and sadness have always [...]
Read More »
A Super Sunday Years ago, the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona’s Super Sunday consisted of a phone-a-thon only. On Jan. 29, not only did volunteers exceed the day’s projected fundraising goal but they performed acts of loving kindness. Activities on this expanded Mitzvah Day included an American Red Cross blood drive, Gift of Life bone [...]
Read More »
These are the things that are limitless, of which a person enjoys the fruit of the world, while the principal remains in the world to come … visiting the sick. — Rabbi Yochanan as cited in Shabbat 127 Back in September, I was a very healthy guy, never having anything more than a cold. That [...]
Read More » A safe haven? Is this really all there is to it? Is this the only reason for us to support Israel, teach about it and engage with it? Is this the reason for us to fly to the other side of the world for a visit, just so we will have a potential safe haven [...]
Read More »
