Like many of you, I have been watching the news in Israel this past week with close attention. Israel is very much a part of my personal identity, and one of the pillars of Temple Emanu-El. We as modern Jewish-Americans cannot understate the importance of Israel to our self-identity and well-being in the world, whether or not we are conscious of it. So it was painful this past week to see the stories and to speak to our Israeli relatives, about the 450 rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists at Israeli civilian populations. Our kids have school canceled due to threats of snow, the Israeli kids had school closed this week because of rockets.  Families spent days on end in bomb shelters.  It’s a sad reality, but also a tremendous testament to the Israeli spirit that they deal with the psychological burden with a sober attitude, and then return back to everyday life when the threat has subsided. L’chayim-to life is more than a toast, it’s a way of life. But I want to share something with … [Read more...]

“Woke up this morning with my mind stayed on Freedom; stayed on Justice, stayed on Peace: Hallelujah!” –Sweet Honey and the Rock These words punctuated our extraordinary Shabbat this past weekend. To listen, click the hyperlink. Forty of us spent the day in Montgomery, Alabama exploring the evolution of slavery in America. Each stopping point along the way brought us closer to the chronicle of slavery’s true evolution; and allowed each of us to sift through our own identity as Jews encountering this narrative. Montgomery, Al was both the most active slave trading port in the south, and the birthplace of the civil rights movement. Our conversation began with an outline of Bryan Stevenson’s four institutions of slavery evolution: slavery itself, the racial terrorism that gave rise to violent lynching’s, slave leasing and criminal execution following slavery’s “legal” end; the Jim Crow era and finally, mass incarceration. We sparked memories of growing up in the segregated and then newly … [Read more...]

It’s no secret to any Jew living in America that the national calendar follows Christian traditions. The Government, businesses, and schools close for Easter and Christmas vacations, but on our holiest days, Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, we have to make the conscious and sometimes difficult decision of how to balance our commitments to our Jewish identity and our commitments to our academic or business expectations. This past Sunday, Temple Emanu-El congregant, Mitch Lewis, came and spoke to the 8th-grade class at the Diamond Family Religious School. I asked him to share his Jewish journey in business and in life with the class. Along the way he posed a difficult hypothetical question to the students: You just started a new job on September 1. The High Holy Days are in a couple of weeks and you’re one member on a team of 5 who has to meet a deadline that falls the day after Yom Kippur. How will you observe Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur? Will you take 3 days off (2 for Rosh HaShanah and … [Read more...]

Each week, we sing Shalom Aleichem, during our community Shabbos candlelighting. These words call forward the מלאכי עליון –malachei eloyon, Angels of the Most High. We call them forth with a blessing of peace; welcome them into our midst in peace, request from them a blessing of peace upon us, and then send them out once more, to depart in peace and return the following Shabbat. This text is a 17th century Z’mira, or Shabbos table song, composed in Tzfat by a kabbalist. The Talmudic story below, a tale of the Shabbos angels, one good, one bad, likely serves as the inspiration for our song: Two ministering angels accompany a person on Shabbat evening from the synagogue to home, one good angel and one evil angel. When they reach home and find a lamp burning and a Shabbos table set, the good angel says: May it be Your will that it shall be like this for another Shabbat. The evil angel answers against his will: Amen. If the person’s home is not prepared for Shabbat in that manner, the evil … [Read more...]

This Friday night we have a very special Shabbat service during which we will honor the man whom I have dubbed ‘The Godfather of Temple Emanu-El’, Lee Katz. It is an auspicious coincidence (or is it?) that this week’s Torah portion is Lech Lecha from the book of Genesis.  In it, Abraham and Sarah hear God’s call to leave the place where they can be comfortable and not do too much, in order to go out into the world of the unknown and engage it as a blessing.  It is from these words that we Jews receive our meta-mission: to mend a world that is broken, with God as our partner.  Abraham and Sarah begin this journey the only way that they know how…one step at a time, and one person at a time.  When they see an opportunity to help another, they go out of their way to try.  When they see an injustice, they do their best to make a difference.  It’s a journey that they started in the Torah, and one that we Jews continue to this very minute. Like Abraham and Sarah, Lee has quietly and behind … [Read more...]