Our Rabbinic Sage with the funniest name, Ben Bag Bag, used to say, “Turn it, and turn it, for everything is therein.”* Meaning, “Study the Torah, then study it again, because we always have something to learn from the text.” Friends, it is that exciting time of year! We have warmed up our muscles and taken the twenty minutes to roll our Torah scroll all the way from the end of Deuteronomy back to the beginning of Genesis. We have literally turned the scroll, turned the scroll, and turned it again so that we can start anew. Whether you’re a Torah study regular, you pop in and out, or you’ve never been before, the beginning is the PERFECT time to hop on in! We’re a judgment free group open to all levels of learners interested in expanding their Jewish knowledge. There’s a prayer we have the chance to say every morning, Eilu D’varim, which goes like this: 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 … [Read more...]

Just this week, while chatting with one of our Temple Emanu-El teens, she relayed to me: “Rabbi, Yom Kippur is going to be so hard this year. Usually, we are at synagogue, away from our home’s distractions, and definitely away from the one place I try to not pay attention to all day…the kitchen! But this year, we are literally attending Yom Kippur services from our kitchen!” She’s not wrong. Like Rosh HaShanah, many of our members will attend Yom Kippur services from their kitchens, dining rooms, living rooms, TV rooms, and sunrooms. For the first time in years, no one can kvetch that we kept the air too hot or too cold (that’s on you this year!). The mundane spaces of our home will be made holy by the sacred words we sing out from the walls of our mikdash m’at (miniature sanctuary). Though there will be new distractions we have not had to face in years past, there will also be new opportunities to enhance our holiday experience. While it may be tempting to sleep through the hard part … [Read more...]

After the unique experience of maternity leave under a global pandemic (though I do not know the experience of such leave under any other circumstance), it’s SO nice to be back “in the office.” With just one deep exhalation, that first phone call, and the wheels of creativity are turning again. That first call came from one of our teens: The Questions: “You’re back soon, right? We can get started on planning programs for our new reality, right? We’re still going to have a youth group, right?” The Answers: “Yes, absolutely, and of course.” We went on to talk about how this year will look like no other year in the life of Temple Emanu-El. In dreaming of what will be, I can’t help but parallel the upcoming experience for Temple Emanu-El, to my own life, as I begin this simultaneous journey as a new parent. Perhaps you too have new beginnings in your life, whether it is a new job, a job hunt, a work-and-home-school balance, a new grade level at school, or something entirely off the wall — … [Read more...]

This may very well be one of the biggest memes of the Jewish world: If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when? — Pirkei Avot 1:14 (You can even find this teaching in the entrance hall to Atlanta’s Mercedes Benz Stadium!) If you’ve been on social media even a little bit throughout this pandemic, you’ve become well versed in the less holy category of internet “memes” that cover a variety of topics: from making light of a hard situation, to offering inspiration, critique, and sometimes just something completely random to get our minds off of everything else going on in the world. Memes have been floating around the internet well before the pandemic, but I feel like I see them more and more in my newsfeeds. But I’d like to draw our attention to a Jewish text that I’ve always thought had a slight parallel to “meme” culture (but obviously far more holy). The parallel is that the text offers tangible, relatable, and quick teachings for … [Read more...]

Remember, Passover is more than the Seder (or pl. Sedarim). For some in our community, you will engage in your Second Night Seder this evening: Perhaps doing exactly what you did last night or even something radically different. For others, you are now in the midst of observing Passover for the remaining biblically ordained 7 (and some of you go with 8) days of Passover.* We’ve asked the question: “Why is this night different from all other nights?” But this year, we are leaning into an extended question: “Why is this Passover, the full week, different from all other years?” The majority of us have never been so at-home for Passover. We’ve never been so plagued. We’ve never been so physically removed from the rest of the world. And yet, though we haven’t had the experience, our ancestors have. As a part of our collective and communal memory, our people have faced this kind of exile throughout generations past. It’s in our spiritual DNA to come together as a community through hardship, … [Read more...]