B'rukhim Haba'im! Navigate by parashah or festival by using the sidebar (top left).


  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The God Who Cries (Rosh Hashanah II 5785)

Image
  Philip Mantofa's " Shofar " The God Who Cries When did we start crying in private? When we were infants, you and I, we cried out because we wanted something. We cried out on the expectation that a caregiver would hear us and respond to our cries. We cried to be held and cared for. Crying out was intended to draw someone near to us.  For most of us, thank God, care was closeby. It is a heartbreaking fact of the human condition that infants without caregivers will stop crying. Crying out is about drawing near.  Moses cries out as an infant in a basket, and is found by a princess who will become his adoptive mother. She names him Moshe from Mashah, to draw out. He cries; she draws him near.  Even more precisely, to “draw close” in Hebrew is karav - the same root as the word korban, a sacrifice in the Temple. The Temple service was about drawing closer to God. It is no wonder, then, that the service of the Temple could be replaced with the service of the heart.  W...
Read more

Look Up and See the Miracle

Image
  Monet's Morning on the Seine in the Rain Look Up and See the Miracle I remember once, in a village in India, watching old men playing cards together on the street. It was an impossibly sweet visual until I was told they were the farmers, and the rain had not come that year. No water meant no work, and no work meant no crops, and no crops meant no money and no food. But the horror of the future was folded into the calmness of the moment, of sitting together and playing cards while waiting for something terrible.  I’m a little obsessed with water.  I’m convinced that something buried in the human consciousness knows that we came from the water. Water is not only the sustaining force in religious myth - it is at the heart of creation narratives. Genesis starts out with a watery abyss, with God splitting the waters to create the sea and the sky. This is a common theme in Middle Eastern creation stories - in Enuma Elish, the Babylonian creation myth, it is the god Marduk who...
Read more

Sacred Pain and Chicken Soup

Image
  Sacred Pain and Chicken Soup I’ve mentioned before on this bimah, I think, that since October 7, I’ve been meeting semi-regularly with a small group of Jewish and Muslim leadership. We’ve mostly been speaking about what’s happening within our communities and how our communities relate, or don’t relate, to one another. A few weeks ago, I joined some of those friends at a local mosque. It was our first time meeting outside of a living room, which always felt a little quiet and maybe even secretive - but there were no issues with inviting us into their sacred space. Some weeks before that, I invited a group of Muslim student imams and future leaders from Indonesia into New London Synagogue for a tour and some learning, too. I don’t want to shy away from it - there were some awkward questions. But there was also meaningful conversation and I think we all left understanding each other better.  The truth is, I don’t do enough interfaith work. There’s always too many other things t...
Read more