In our Kol Haneshamah Shabbat and Festival prayerbook, the prayer for peace comes from Ukraine. In a way, this declaration somewhat condenses the geo-history of the place, specifically the Jewish peoples’ place in that place. Yet there is no doubt that the figure we call Rebbe Nahman of Breslav practiced his form of Hasidism from a place now […]
Looking back on some previous reflections on Tu Bishvat, I found this message, one that feels keenly relevant to this year: We find ourselves, deep in winter, in the month of the Jewish New Year of the Trees, Tu Bishvat. At this time of the year the trees seem to the eye to be life-less. Where do […]
Is this you? You have a “Christmas Family.” They are your in-laws, your grandparents, or your cousins. It could be the beautiful kinship network that is your family-of-choice, or your partner. May your children celebrate with their half-siblings. Maybe, in those years when you go home for the Holidays, your childhood home is festooned with […]
How is human rights a Jewish concept? Is it even possible or appropriate to shoehorn an apparently secular construct into a specific religious or cultural context? Two thoughts arise first: The concept of an internationally-recognized corpus of human rights, and its attendant institutions, arose immediately following the Second World War, and the recognition of the horrors […]
Our household is enjoying a second season of pandemic gardening. Last summer, like many others with the blessing of a yard, we dug up a modest rectangle and planted a vegetable garden. This summer’s crop is almost at an end, but the bounty of tomatoes is dotting my diet with red, orange and green deliciousness. […]
When the Torah begins, it seems as if there was nothing, and then there was something. At the start, when elohim created the celestial and earthly realms, on earth was utter nothingness, with blank darkness hovering over the depths… and then, everything emerges from it. It’s a strange, haunting vision, provoking many ways of understanding it – scientific, […]
There was a time when we all gathered around a single screen to watch a live event during the school day. Some of those times occurred at history-making moments, not all of them bearing the same weight. The first one I can recall involved a hockey game, sometime in the early 1970, but I don’t […]
Last year at this time, it made perfect sense that I would write about time and counting. Then, as now, we were in the Omer period, the 49 days between the second night of Passover and the eve of Shavuot, which celebrates the gift of Torah. Then, as now, we were grappling with the impact of the […]
Dear OrH Family, It’s only a few days before Passover, so I won’t take up too much of your time with a long missive. In the spirit of the four questions and the four cups, I did however, want to share with you four letters, including this one, which I hope you will make time […]
Spring and Passover. The entire Jewish calendar hinges on the confluence of season with festival. Though we experience what feel like inconsistent shifts in our holiday dates from year to year (when is Passover this year??), it’s the anchoring of pesah in aviv/spring that keeps everything else in the year cycle in its season. What a gift it is, to have the opportunity to […]
