Tonight Israel will write a new chapter in human history. At 8:45pm EST SpaceIL, a privately funded Israeli space exploration company will launch Beresheet, an lunar lander aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida. To date, only three countries have ever landed on the moon: the United States, Russia, and China. Forty days from now, Israel will be the fourth country, in human history, to land on the moon. Forty days can pass in the blink of an eye or it can feel like an eternity. For our ancestors wandering in the desert, forty days was enough time to lose faith in God, build a golden calf, and worship a foreign idol. This week’s parasha is Ki Tisa, the parasha in which Moses tells the Israelites that he’ll return in forty days, but he ends up delaying a bit. Forty days of waiting at the foot of Mt. Sinai led the Israelites to throw their hands in the sky and turn to their other leader, Aaron, Moses’ brother, for a new path to follow. Over the next forty days, our … [Read more...]
Is He Jewish?
This week’s parshah, Vayechi, contains the last chapters in Genesis that describe Jacob’s blessings to his sons from his deathbed. Remember, because Joseph had interpreted Pharaoh’s dream and saved Egypt (and his family) from famine, Pharaoh rewarded Joseph by allowing his entire family to immigrate to Egypt and granted them land. As the years went by, life went on, and Joseph married a nice Egyptian girl by the name of Asenath. Together they had two boys, Ephraim & Menasha. From his deathbed, Jacob called for his two grandsons, whom he had never met. When the two boys approached him with their father, Joseph, Jacob exclaimed, ‘mi aleh?’/Who are these two guys? For you see, to old Jacob, his grandsons did not ‘look Jewish’. They did not dress like Jews, but rather like Egyptians. They did not speak ‘Jewish’, but rather Egyptian. Even their mannerisms were foreign to Jacob. This makes sense as the boys were born in Egypt to an Egyptian mother. They had grown up in the … [Read more...]
What a Japanese Artist Taught Me About My Judaism and Thanksgiving
I took a field trip to The High Museum of Art on Tuesday morning to experience the Yoyai Kusama “Infinity Mirror Rooms” exhibit. Written on the wall was the following instruction: look for the recurring motif of peering eyes, awakened to the wonders of time and space: reminders that we are not alone in the universe but, instead, are surrounded by memories, souls, and spirits.” The experience of walking through these seven rooms reminded me of a chassidic lesson taught by Rabbi Simcha Bunam who instructed his students to write out two scrolls and put one in each pocket. On the first, the rabbi instructed them to write, “I am but dust and ashes,” and on the second he instructed his students to write, “The world was created for me.” Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms reflect Rabbi Simcha Bunam’s instruction. On the one hand (or in one pocket), we hold that we are just a speck in the universe. When I walked into Kusama’s rooms I was surrounded and embraced by specks of light or an endless … [Read more...]
Start Today
In some ways, the High Holidays (and Yom Kippur in particular) are ‘artificial lines in the sand.’ Meaning, the intense internal work that we seek to do for our own lives, and the health of our community can be done at any time, but for the vast majority of us, it is not. Life is busy. Introspection is hard. So Judaism gives us a set period of time for this ‘project’ – the days leading up to Yom Kippur. Although it is profoundly personal, we don’t do it alone, but rather as a ‘team’ with Jews everywhere charged towards this effort. One of the main components of Yom Kippur is to recognize who we have wronged in the past year, to try our best to correct the harm we have done, to internalize the regret, and to apologize. Tradition holds our proverbial feet to the fire with the instruction that we need to be specific about the person, and our infraction, in order to have our apology ‘count’. (Sorry, posting a general apology on Facebook to a faceless population absolutely does … [Read more...]
Yom Kippur is the Happiest Day of the Year
So often we rush out of services too soon to experience how the day changes and evolves. Just because Yom Kippur is a heavy day laden with talk of teshuva, judgment, and reflection, does not also mean that Yom Kippur cannot be happy as well. Yom Kippur is filled with complex emotions. On Erev Yom Kippur and on Yom Kippur morning, the liturgy is heavy on the ways we have gone astray and the ways we can improve in the year to come, but as the day goes on the mood brightens. The last service of the day, Ne’ilah, is triumphant service that proclaims, we are here, we have been forgiven and pardoned, and we can enter the new year with a clean slate! The idea of Yom Kippur as the most joyous day of the year goes back to the Talmud. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, one of our greatest sages, said that Yom Kippur was a day of dancing and music in his time. Later rabbis wonder why Yom Kippur was so happy in Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel’s time. They realize that the point of Yom Kippur is to face the … [Read more...]
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