Raise your hand if you’ve heard the following: On Friday evening, we cover the challah until after we’ve blessed the wine because we don’t want the challah to be embarrassed that it comes second! I bet there are a good many hands in the air right now. Okay, you can put your hand down. For those who have and who haven’t heard that explanation before, most of us have wondered why we cover the challah before we begin our meal. The story of why we cover the challah is a lot like the story about the congregation whose congregants would bow before going up on the bimah. There is an old tale about a synagogue who had a chandelier that was hung too low above the bimah. It was so low that, every time a congregant came up to open the ark or remove a Torah, each person would have to duck to avoid it. Years later, the synagogue was renovated and the chandelier was raised, but people kept ducking — a person would come up for an honor and bow before going up on the bimah. A generation passed and … [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 does a rabbi do?
I spoke to one of my greatest teachers today. She’s about 3 feet tall, she knows all her colors, she loves to draw, and I see her each day at Schiff Preschool. She asked me a question that I’ve been asked dozens of times before, but this time I gave an answer that was totally different. She asked me, “What does a rabbi do?” Immediately, I thought of all the people I get to teach, from our smallest to our tallest. Then, I thought about all the simchas I get to be a part of; how the smiles at baby namings, b’nai mitzvah, weddings, and more, are contagious and bring light to our souls. I thought of a many more things a rabbi gets to do. But in the end, I told my teacher that a rabbi’s job is to make friends. Just like on Chanukah when we add candles to increase the holiness of the moment, when we add friends, when we expand our community, we also bring in holiness. Hillel’s great ruling for Chanukah was to add a candle for each night because as the holiday goes on, each night is … [Read more...]
Change your seat, change your fortune!
The most pressing question of my week is, “who will get to sit next to Papa (my dad) at Shabbat dinner?” Every Shabbat evening at my parent’s home we go through the same routine. After all the family arrives we gather around to say what we are grateful for in the past week, we say the Shabbat blessings, and we sit down at the table for dinner. While the food may be different from week to week and we might be grateful for different things each Friday night, we NEVER change our seats. Our seat at the table, regardless of our age, is a fixed feature of each Shabbat. The most prized seat being, of course, to either side of Papa. I lost out on that seat years ago to my nephews, but the value and honor in sitting next to my dad is a premium luxury. We, and even our talmudic sages, know how important one’s physical place is in the world. When we are not feeling well, when we are down on our luck, or in a funk, we know that we must make a change. Sometimes the change we make is for our … [Read more...]
Ritual in a New Light
I just had an intense conversation with a congregant who is a friend, about her desire to infuse our basic Shabbat rituals, like lighting candles, with spirituality. More specifically, she relayed to me that she was raised doing these rituals, but resented them, because they seemed void of ‘meaning’, and thus, she grew up resenting them. This might sound familiar to some of you. What I suggested to my friend is to make an effort to slow those rituals down, and then to articulate the symbolism of the ritual. With our Shabbat candles, this would involve gathering your family around you, dimming the lights, and letting a pregnant moment create some light drama. Then a preamble, perhaps about bringing light into a world that can seem dark… or that we have the power to light the candle and thus, if we choose, are bringers of light. The prayer, giving credit to God for empowering us with choice and allowing light to illuminate, can be explicitly credited as a metaphor for all the … [Read more...]
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