From the Rabbi

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 with AIDS in 1983, I vowed to do something to honour his memory.

A few years later, while living in Toronto, I launched the CHAI Project – AIDS education in the Jewish Community. At the same time, I was a volunteer with ACT, the AIDS...Read more...

The devar torah and discussion took place on the Shabbat during Sukkot, the Festival of Booths. I was a rabbinical student, and my primary “davening” community was at Minyan Dorshei Derekh, one of three such prayer groups that meet at Germantown Jewish Centre in Philadelphia. Along with the Jewish Renewal congregation that met nearby, the communities served as an anchor to a kind-of urban shtetl.

Because so many folks who belonged...Read more...

Limnot yameinu. Let us know how to assess our days.

It’s a good one to bring to mind at this time of year, even though it is not a passage particularly tied to the sefira/omer period, the time of counting the 7-times-7-plus-one days from Passover to Shavuot. I am drawn to this psalm, and its...Read more...

Last month, I wrote about the deep meaning I find in working with a candidate for conversion, and the questions it raises for those of us born into this tradition/tribe/religion. (See: How Do You Jew?). 

Apart from those of us whose professional lives are demarcated by the time we devote Jewish learning and teaching, when and how do the rest of our people – those who are already “in” – delve into the big...Read more...

Among all of the deeply rewarding elements of the pulpit rabbinate, none has been as meaning-filled, for me personally and on a broader communal level, as guiding the study and rituals of those who choose Judaism and the Jewish people as their own.

Each of the individuals who have invited me to join them -- at whatever stage of the journey they find themselves when we meet here through our little Reconstructionist community in Ottawa,...Read more...