Isaac Bashevis Singer tells a story about a very angry man. This man has to have everything “just so.” Any time things don’t go his way, he shouts and belittles and, on occasion, reacts violently. So even though he is rich and learned and successful, the man is miserable. His business partners have left him, his friends want nothing to do with him, his children are afraid of him, and his wife is fed up.

According to the Talmud, when a person comes before the Beit Din, the rabbinical court, seeking to convert to Judaism, the rabbis ask this question: “What did you see that made you want to convert? Don’t you know that right now, Jews are anguished, suppressed, despised, and harassed, and hardships are frequently visited upon them?” (Yev. 47a). In other words, “Are you serious?!

In 2003, I was in my first year of rabbinical school in Jerusalem. It was the middle of the Second Intifada, and it was terrifying. After several bus bombings in Jerusalem, including one around the corner from my apartment, the rabbinical students at Hebrew Union College – both the Americans there for our first year and the Israelis studying in HUC’s Israeli rabbinical program – gathered together to talk about hamatzav, the “situation,”

The rabbi looked at his creation. “You are called a Golem because you are made from the mud of the earth. Your only job is to protect the Jewish people.”

The Jewish People loves holidays. This week’s parashah, Emor, reminds the Israelites of the yontif schedule: Shabbat every week, of course, and then the big ones: Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. Dayenu, that would have been enough.

In the summer of 1998, right before my senior year in high school, my sister and I went to Israel with NFTY, the Reform youth movement. We spent six weeks touring the country and spent some time with Israeli teens. One night, sitting around a campfire,

April 17, 2026 Leprosy. This week’s Torah portion is about leprosy. Or some other kind of skin affliction. In great detail, our portion outlines the process for the priests to diagnose the affliction, quarantine the individual outside the camp, and then perform the rituals and offerings needed to bring the afflicted person back into the community. It is probably the strangest and grossest parashah in the whole Torah. Biblical scholars have done their very best to make sense o

Raise your hand if you’re feeling just slightly unsettled. Or more than just slightly. OK, good – I’m glad it’s not just me. It has been another rollercoaster of a news cycle this week, from threats to destroy an entire civilization to a fragile semi-ceasefire. What will the president do next? Will the war resume? Will there be a global financial crisis? Will gas ever be less than $6.00 a gallon?

At last week’s temple board meeting, we were hearing an update on the plans for the community seder (next Thursday evening – please sign up if you haven’t yet!), and we came to the question of hiring security guards for the evening. You won’t be surprised to hear that there was a range of opinions on the subject, with strong feelings expressed on all sides. I thought to myself, how sad it is that we have to spend our time on this conversation, that we live in a world where Je