From the Rabbi

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

Last year at this time, it made perfect sense that I would write about time and counting. Then, as now, we were in the Omer period, the 49 days between the second night of Passover and the eve of Shavuot, which celebrates the gift of Torah. Then, as now, we were grappling with the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic. Now, though, there is a different weightiness to the sentiment from the psalm I quoted in last year’s blog...Read more...

Spring and Passover. The entire Jewish calendar hinges on the confluence of season with festival. Though we experience what feel like inconsistent shifts in our holiday dates from year to year (when is Passover this year??), it’s the anchoring of pesah in aviv/spring that keeps everything else in the year cycle in its season.
 
What a gift it is, to have the opportunity to focus our attention not only on the inevitability of...Read more...

When I was a child, I had a favourite book of Jewish folk tales and stories, which I would love to read aloud to company. Apparently, my parents didn’t curb this propensity, which may have laid the groundwork for some of my current professional activities [insert winking rabbi emoji].
 
My all-time favourite section of the book was devoted to stories of Chelm. Whether or not I understood it as a real place or a fictional...Read more...

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 presidential election, it’s all I can do not to vibrate with worry and fear.
 
Listening to some mid-day classical...Read more...

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 has been reeling and adapting as we have altered our habits and rituals, alert to and monitoring our health...Read more...