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...]

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...]

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...]