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...]
Want a Life of Blessing? The Choice is Yours.
The rabbinic imagination is incredible sometimes. For those of you who have learned Talmud with me, you know that each page of Talmud is as likely to contain pearls of wisdom as fantastical tales of beasts, the Heavens, and the role of human beings. This week we read in our Torah portion the ultimate affirmation of free will and the rabbis take it a step further: See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of Adonai your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of Adonai your God. We are the ones to choose our actions. No one but ourselves can make the right decision. God tells us to choose between blessing or curse. But the rabbis go a step further to say that we can make a new choice every day. In the rabbinic mind, from when we go to sleep to when we wake up, in that time, we enter an entirely new world. The prayer called, “Yotzeir Or,” said in the morning just before Shema, affirms this: In … [Read more...]
Ships & Harbors
This summer when we were ready to return from our family road trip to New England, my eldest son, Mac, asked if he could stay. His cousins are there, those states are doing much better than Georgia with Corona (masks, social distancing, etc), and he could have a few weeks of a normal-ish summer. Once my sister extended an actual invitation, we gratefully accepted, and Mac has spent the past few weeks exploring the rocky Rhode Island beaches with the eager curiosity that defines the best of who he is. We miss him, but he calls…sometimes. A few nights ago, he found a seat on a cliff overlooking the Newport Bay, and through Facetime, was describing to Marita and I what he was experiencing. Warm waters with sailboats against the setting sun, the brilliant colors against the salt sea air, and a sense of profound calm. Every few moments he would turn the phone camera away from that ocean scene, and then return it back again. We asked him, “Why are you doing that?” His reply has … [Read more...]
Better Together
One of the things that I most like about the Atlanta Jewish community is that the synagogues (and other Jewish institutions) get along quite well. This was not the case in the other cities in which I have worked, where their approach to one another ranged from apathetic to near animosity. In part, I suspect it has to do with us living in the South, and the Jewish experience of being a minority in these states, sometimes a conspicuous one. It is not rare to hear stories from Temple Emanu-El congregants of growing up in towns without a Jewish community, and of how their family would gladly drive more than an hour on Sundays for Religious School and to meet up with other Jews. Being Jewish in the South is an active part of our identity, and we are more aware of it than are many other geographic locations. My experience here in Atlanta has been that this Jewish awareness is, for the most part, a very positive thing. Southern Jews are social people, and eagerly seek each other out. … [Read more...]
When you need it most…
As the sun begins to set, each Friday night, we Jews sing a prayer that expresses our yearning to enter a particular type of time; one that is joyous and elevated, one where we can recall our very best selves. Known by its first two words, “lecha dodi”, the entire prayer is posed in a metaphor of a groom eagerly awaiting his bride just before she appears to him for her walk down the wedding aisle to their chuppah. A timeless drama meant to reflect the Jewish people as we eagerly await our own b’sherit, our people’s soul-mate, called Shabbat. “Come my beloved” our prayer seems to echo, “together our spirits, and our lives, will intertwine… together we will become so much more.” This prayer was composed in the 16th century in Israel’s cool mountain-city of Safed by the renowned Kabbalist, Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz. The brilliance of Lecha Dodi is that it has us recall an almost universal, yet unique, experience of waiting for our love, whose arrival will mark the beginning of the best … [Read more...]
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