“Have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me too, Father!” These might just be the most heartbreaking words in the whole Torah. Isaac, old and blind, is nearing death. He wants to give a special blessing to his favorite son, Esau...

Pop quiz: what does Vice-President JD Vance have in common with a fictional rabbi? The answer: both Vance and Noah Roklov, the charming rabbi in the TV show “Nobody Wants This,” want their partners to convert to their religions.

This week we lost Rabbi Arthur Waskow, the great rabbi, author, and activist for progressive causes. I wanted to share a little bit about him with you, as well as some of his insights into this week’s Torah portion.

I’m not what you’d call a morning person. I don’t normally jump out of bed in the morning, and especially not on a Monday. But this week was an exception.

Shabbat Sukkot Adapted from a story by Debra Gordon Zaslow Once, long ago, there was a young couple who were truly in love. They decided to be married in the autumn under the canopy of the sukkah in the presence of their friends and relatives. When the time came, they invited the ushpizin , the spirits of the ancestors who are traditionally invited into the sukkah during the holiday. They said their vows with the full moon peeking through the s’chach  that lined the sukkah ro

It is the season of t’shuvah. As you probably know, t’shuvah, often translated as “repentance,” literally means “return,”

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei, has the distinction of being the parashah with the most mitzvot in it – 74 laws, in fact.

“You are what you eat.” Some say a French politician and author named Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin coined a version of the phrase in 1826,

Graham Nash was not, as far as I know, inspired by the Book of Deuteronomy when he wrote this song in 1968. So we’ll consider it just a happ

The walls are crumbling before our very eyes. Walls of denial, walls of defensiveness, walls of deception. The walls are crumbling and we can see – we must see – what is behind them: starvation, suffering, death.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Friday, June 26, 2015. The Supreme Court issued their decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, granting same-sex couples the right to marry in all 50 states.

“Kol ha’olam kulo, gesher tzar m’od. The whole world, all of it, is a very narrow bridge.” Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav, the chasidic master who wrote this teaching over two hundred years ago, captures an unpleasant, if common, human experience.

These words can be found in Mishkan T’filah, the Reform movement’s prayerbook, on page 165, but their true origin is more obscure.

כֹּל עוֹד בַּלֵּבָב פְּנִימָה נֶפֶשׁ יְהוּדִי הוֹמִיָּה. As long as in the heart, within, The soul of a Jew still yearns, And onward, towards the ends of the east, an eye still gazes toward   Zion; Our hope is not yet lost, The hope of two thousand years, To be a free people in our land, The land of Zion and   Jerusalem.  It is a strange choice for a national anthem. The haunting melody, the longing, somber lyrics. No rockets’ red glare or bombs bursting in air, no “ jour de

In case you’re not familiar with this song, here’s a little background. Zum Gali Gali, also known as the “Israeli Work Song,” was written so

The moment of redemption has finally arrived. This week, our parashah is Bo, which literally means “Come,” but should really be called...

I was tempted to give a D’var Torah tonight on this week’s Torah portion, Korach, which is a dramatic story about the thirst for power...

He explains, “We have all heard it a thousand times. Christianity is about love, we are told, but Judaism is about…something else, like law,

Last Shabbat, I jokingly said I’d save politics at least until my second week on the job...