From the Rabbi

Words of the Spirit, by Rabbi Liz Bolton, Or Haneshamah's rabbi and spiritual leader

Individuals, communities and nations are exercising compassion these days, on a global scale.

To have compassion is to expand one’s consciousness beyond limits. It is a pouring out of the ineffable capacity to care-beyond – beyond one’s own needs, beyond one’s own identity, beyond one’s own tribe, beyond one’s own benefit.

We sometimes call such people altruistic. If so, would that mean that the opposite of...Read more...

When preparing class outlines for Introduction to Judaism courses, I sigh each time I see the heading “Jewish Calendar.” It’s complicated, as we often say about so many difficult matters.

We – and the majority of Jews in Canada and the U.S. – do not necessarily live in “Jewish time.” We overlay or integrate Jewish time into our weeks, months, and years, sometimes consistently, sometimes profoundly, sometimes with...Read more...

The Jewish year cycle can be understood as an object lesson in extremes, at least at the beginning of the calendar year. Maybe we should call this Jewish month XTishrey, and all the holiday events our XTishrey Games!

We start in joy, celebrating a new year, and wishes for sweetness, but shaded in the colors of teshuvah throughout the days of repentance. Ten days later, we are at our most abject, fasting and praying through an evening,...Read more...

During the Jewish months of Elul and Tishrey, I invite you to take each of four themes, and consider them in your thoughts, conversations or rituals. They represent the three simplest essentials of prayers, with a fourth seasonally-specific one: PLEASE. THANKS. YAY! FORGIVE ME.

Yay! This is one of three primary purposes of Jewish prayer. We say a litany of yay words in our Aramaic “doxology,” otherwise known as the Kaddish, in...Read more...

During the Jewish months of Elul and Tishrey, I invite you to take each of four themes and consider them in your thoughts, conversations or prayers. They represent the three simplest essentials of prayers, with a fourth seasonally specific one: PLEASE. THANKS. YAY! FORGIVE ME.

Encountering these hot days of summer on the new moon of Elul, exactly one moon cycle before the Ten Days of Awe, can feel, well, too sunny. After all, this...Read more...