Should we be surprised that a parasha entitled Hayey Sarah, “the life of Sarah”, in fact opens with the death of Sarah, and encompasses nothing of her life story? Torah is full of round-about tales and messages. Here is one that is perhaps more significant for being less straightforward. It is about Sarah, and yet not about one […]
And now, for something completely … regular. We say farewell to Tishrey 5780 the same week that we welcome (regard with annoyance? celebrate? ignore?) Halloween. Because nothing says the Jewish fall festivals are over more clearly than the proliferation of skeletons, ghosts, and the creepy spray stuff that covers doorways and shrubs. My view of […]
As a young Jewish Canadian kid, Thanksgiving was, well, nonexistent. I vaguely knew that it was a Big Thing in the United States, mainly because we had relatives there. And because it often overlapped with Sukkot, which I only celebrated at school or shul, the fall harvest festival season didn’t really have an impact in […]
For some of us, this time of year evokes memories of new school items, perhaps a lunch box, sharp pencils with erasers that work, snazzy fresh outfits. For others, it’s the weather and its changes, from the hot-cool-warm-hot-cold pendulum swings to the changing colours. Early in the week before Rosh Hashanah 2019/5779-5780 the fall equinox […]
Right in the middle of Labour Day weekend 2019, Rosh Hodesh Elul – the first day of the month of preparation for the Jewish New Year – fell on September 1st. For one month, the Jewish calendar numbers will completely align with the Gregorian dates. The High Holy Days, paradoxically, line up pretty well with […]
[To mark the opening of Capital Pride Week we are reprinting a Words of the Spirit column from August 9, 2016] In the early 1980s, when the AIDS crisis had already begun to cut its wide swath of devastation in the United States, the epidemic was just emerging in Canada. After my dearest high school friend died […]
This mid-summer holiday-that-is-not-a-holy-day, mourning a historical event to which we have difficulty relating, is among the least-observed date on the calendar in liberal Jewish communities. Perhaps the early rabbis felt its difficulties as well, and so added to this fast day commemorating the destruction of the First (586 BCE) and Second Temples (70 CE) in […]
Our community doesn’t necessarily think of itself as having had multiple rabbis, as in the plural. In fact, ORH has played host to a deep roster of graduates of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, mostly during their student years. Founded as a havurah, or friendship circle, ORH in its early years welcomed ritual leadership support from members […]
The following remarks were delivered at the Annual General Meeting on May 26, 2019. Engaging in the life of a synagogue community is a radical act, and a spiritual act. It represents the essence of defining spirituality, and of challenging the predictable social order. How is offering of yourself a spiritual act? Simple. It is, […]
Dear Or Haneshamah community, It was a day that was already laden, soggy even, with unease. Many of us have been observing the flood conditions in the Ottawa-Gatineau region that had risen to threatening levels during the Passover week. Some of turned our attention to our basements, or to our neighbours and our neighbourhoods; some […]
