Cantor, Teacher, Writer
Some of our most well known and beloved holidays are filled with irony. Purim, a violent, Machiavelian, Tarantino-esque story of attempted genocide has become transformed into a fun dress-up holiday for little kids. Passover, the festival which celebrates our people's liberation, has become the most back-breaking, labor-intensive period of the year. And now Chanukah. The ...
Put down the dreidl, stop eating the latkes, and take a break from giving gifts. It's time for a much more profound and significant Chanukah tradition: Chanukah music on Sirius XM. This year you can find it on Channel 77. I have no idea who runs that channel over there and decides what music to ...
Generations of Hebrew school kids have been bombarded with the repeated message: "Chanukah is not the Jewish Christmas." True--in fact, Christmas is more like the Christian Chanukah since it came afterwards. Here's what both holidays have in common: They both occur sometime near the Winter Solstice. They both involve lots of lights. They both have ...
This week's Torah portion marks the 38th anniversary of my bar mitzvah. (Go ahead, I'll give you moment to do that in your head). What struck me is how much and how little things have changed in that period of time. On the one hand, synagogue life couldn't be more different. The Conservative Movement has ...
We Jews seem to spend an inordinate amount of time and effort avoiding ever saying God’s name. That has always struck me as strange. The rationale is that God’s name is so holy, even uttering the word should be reserved for similarly sacred occasions. Praying. Making a blessing. Hoping those police lights in your rear ...
Is it possible to know an iconic and beloved story of the Torah so well and realize that for generations, despite everything that we've been taught and thought we understood, we've been completely and utterly missing the point? The narrative of the Akeida, the near sacrifice of Isaac is one such story. Supposedly a text ...
This is the line of Noah. Noah was a righteous man; he was blameless in his age; Noah walked with God. God said to Noah, “I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with lawlessness because of them: I am about to destroy them with the earth. ...
