From the Rabbi

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

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. My neighbours, too, are reaping the benefits, especially the happy profusion of sweet little...Read more...

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...Read more...

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 to read.
 
You see, while some of you are busy preparing for Passover in the ways that you always do, or in the ways you are discovering,...Read more...

It’s been a minute.
 
This rather quirky contemporary expression means its opposite.
 
When you [used to] run into someone on the sidewalk, if it had been a while since you’d seen each other, it’s what one of you might say to the other.
 
Really. It’s been a minute.
 
Time, many of us are experiencing, is doing funky things these days. When it comes to Jewish calendar time, that is...Read more...

Nes gadol hayah sham. A great miracle happened there. Where? In Great Britain, of course. A vaccine developed to protect against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, is now being offered to British citizens, beginning with a widely publicized first injection on December 8.
 
That it is happening this week in the month of December – make that the month of Kislev – is noteworthy, in a multicivilizational sense. Students...Read more...