This Friday night, our services will be filled with the many voices of our congregation. You will especially hear the voices of Davis students as they join us in prayer and reflection, sharing with the community why they like to be Jewish. I often joke that one of my favorite parts of being a rabbi is that I get to be a “professional Jew.” By this, I mean that I live out my days trying to model an active Jewish lifestyle that projects the values and morals of our tradition in a 21st-century world. Sometimes that means teaching in the classroom, leading a congregation in prayer, or comforting a mourner. Other times, it involves talking to preschoolers about their views on God, playing Gaga with the fourth grade, or even taking our tenth graders to lobby their elected officials, all the way to their D.C. offices. So what’s my favorite part of being Jewish? Well, as a rabbi, it’s the ability to do every single one of those things in a single week. This week in particular, after the … [Read more...]
Rabbi, what does it mean to spend Shabbat Together?
Shabbat Together is both a state of mind AND an exciting initiative of Temple Emanu-El. Shabbat Together reaches out to Jews in their 20s and 30s in the north-Atlanta area for a Shabbat dinner experience with me and Rabbi Max. Last week, Rabbi Max and I brought in Shabbat with ten other young Jews at a home in Dunwoody. As everyone began to arrive, we gathered in the kitchen where people got to know one another, poured a glass of wine, and noshed on some appetizers. In the tradition of Shabbat Together, we formally began the evening with a moment of gratitude. We passed out quarters and invited each person to share something they were thankful for from last Shabbat to this Shabbat before placing the money into the tzedakah box. We all became closer at that moment as couples (who didn’t necessarily know one another) shared how they were thankful for their spouse after a hard week of work, that their mother received positive news about her health, that they were thankful to finally … [Read more...]
Rabbi, why is 18 a “lucky” number in Judaism?
I have to say, the number 18 was never my “lucky” number as a kid. Probably like many of you, I based my lucky number on my favorite athlete’s jersey. For me, it was soccer star, Christine Lily’s, #13, but perhaps you always went for Michael Jordan’s #23. In mystical Judaism, numbers and letters have a special relationship that gives certain numbers, like 18, a unique standing in the Jewish community. In the Jewish tradition of Gematria, the letters of the Aleph-Bet correspond to numbers: Aleph is 1, Bet is 2…Yud is 10, Yud-Aleph is 11, etc.. To get to the number 18, we add together the Chet (8) and the Yud (10), and what does that spell? — חי chai, meaning “alive.” Phrases like l’chaim, לחיים “to life,” ring out during celebrations and joyous gatherings. Perhaps you shouted a hardy “L’chaim!” as the clock struck midnight and we entered the year 2018 (20חי). We are constantly wishing each other a long life of health and prosperity, all of which our tradition likes to put on this … [Read more...]
Rabbi, why do some people write G-d and others write God?
Across the board from clergy to congregants, you will see a variety of ways that people spell God. My personal practice is to write out the name, G-o-d, God. Although, when I was in the 3rd grade, I remember a teacher took off points from an assignment because I “spelled God’s name incorrectly,” when I wrote G-d. When I asked my rabbi at the time about it, he said that there was no need for me to write G-d, I could write G-o-d, though he didn’t think the elementary school teacher needed to be taking off points for such things! There is no law that prohibits the writing of God’s name in Hebrew or in English. However, there is a law that prohibits the erasure of God’s name in the Hebrew. Deut. 12:3 reads, “Tear down their altars, smash their pillars, put their sacred posts to the fire, and cut down the images of their gods, obliterating their name from that site.” Rashi comments on the obliteration of their names and says that from this text we learn that blotting out God’s name is … [Read more...]
What’s All This Bowing About?
As a child I remember standing in services looking forward to the chance to bend my knees and bow. It was this exciting change of pace, a time for me to do what the adults were doing. As a teen, I remember seeing how some people bowed and others didn’t and I wondered what was going on — so I went to the rabbi with my question, “What’s all this bowing about?” Maybe you have wondered the same thing. Perhaps you’ve been standing in prayer and suddenly you notice people are bowing and so, you too bow! But you’ve always wondered, why do I bow here and not there? Sometimes it may even look like people are bowing more than others, so who’s doing it “right”? This question of “doing it right,” is an interesting one in prayer, especially in Reform Judaism, where we tend to focus much more on how it makes us feel and less on “is this exactly how we were prescribed and commanded to do it.” As has been codified in our law codes (like the Shulchan Aruch), there are in fact specific moments … [Read more...]
