Tuesday November 3, 2020. It’s hard to imagine anywhere in North America that is not on double high alert today. I say this not just as a dual citizen of Canada and the United States, but as a distressed citizen of the planet. Between the coronavirus infection numbers and the pending outcome of the American […]
I. This past year I returned to an old hobby of mine, taking up various styles of needlework. My cross-stitching projects have included small pieces, some no bigger than 4 inches around or 6 inches across. Often, they feature “bad words,” surrounded by the kind of genteel floral patterns one associates with antimacassars and porcelain […]
While it’s true that every year is a year like no other, and every new year brings uniquely new possibilities, this year I find myself reaching back to my Ashkenazi upbringing: This is takkeh* a year like no other! Halevay** this new year brings uniquely new possibilities! OY! For the past six months, much of the world […]
As I write this on the Friday that is the first day of Elul, the month before the new year begins, I am stepping into my annual process of teshuvah. At the same time, it feels like my spiritual heels are dragging along the ground, unsure of my steps in this unstable time. For the many […]
There’s a particular perspective that I have heard over the years from folks who are new to Judaism, or who have joined the Jewish people. It comes from their observations of, or experiences with, Jewish rituals around mourning and grief. Universally, the perspective is one of appreciation – for the concrete rituals; for the communal […]
This week in the yearly Torah cycle brings us to an extremely interesting junction in relation to this moment in our pandemic experience, and to this point in our rabbi-congregation partnership. Where we are in the Torah is in the space between the last parshah of Bemidbar or the book of Numbers called Masei, literally the “settings-out,” or […]
Of all my mother’s many cousins, only Rose and Harry from Baltimore were called by their family “title.” They were closer in age to my mother’s European-born aunts and uncles, so it only seemed respectful that we addressed them as Cousin Rose and Cousin Harry. We visited our Baltimore relatives a handful of times during […]
This coming Shabbat has at least two dates: May 30th on the Gregorian calendar, and the 7th of Sivan on the Hebrew calendar. What else comes in twos this last Shabbat in May, the first Shabbat following the Omer period? It also has two Torah portions. This is a distinction that is different from the […]
This week’s double-parshah, Acharey Mot-Kedoshim, can strike both love and loathing in the hearts of Torah students. Love, for the passage at the heart of Kedoshim: love your neighbour as yourself [Lev 19:18] along with many other uplifting verses. Loathing, for the oh so many strange, alien and even repellant passages, including the repeated injunctions to not lie with a […]
Today is April 14, 2020. It’s a Tuesday. It’s the last day of the “intermediate” days of Passover. It’s the first “weekday” after the Easter holiday weekend. It’s spring, the time of the earliest flowering bloomers and budding trees. Or, as one of the many internet posts offered on the theme of “when someone asks […]
