RJ Blog

When It’s Hard to Believe Life Will Get Better  By Billy Dreskin In this week’s double parashah, B’har/B’chukotai, we read (among many other topics) of the mitzvah to observe the yovel, the fiftieth “Jubilee” year. From the second half of Leviticus 25:10: “It shall be a jubilee for you: each of you shall return to your holding and each of you shall return to your family.”

by Helaine Bach In case you didn’t know, May 4th was National Star Wars day. If you didn’t, chances are that by some means on that day, you found out. You may have been greeted with a “May the fourth be with you” or found out through posts on Facebook. The fourth of May this year happened to land on a Friday. I went to school, put up with the corny Star Wars puns, and when school let out figured I was done for the day. I was wrong. The rabbi of our congregation is a bit of a Star [...]

By Billy Dreskin Way back in July 1990, when my daughter Katie was two years old, Ellen turned to our little girl and said, “Tell Daddy something he doesn’t know.” Katie whispered, smiling shyly, “Today is Mommy’s birthday.” Can you say doghouse? While I’ve never been quite so absent-minded as Professor Brainard (in Flubber and The Absent-Minded Professor), I have been known to get involved in the “importance” of my work and miss the importance of my marriage. Lucky for me, part of Ellen’s portfolio is “angelic, forgiving spirit.”

by Arlene Chernow I was raised by loving, secular Jewish parents in a neighborhood with not too many Jewish neighbors. It wasn’t until my children were young that I began to discover Judaism.  I found that Judaism, especially Reform Judaism, was a great fit for what I believed (which is what I have since heard from many Jews-by-choice). The more I learned, the more I came to love Judaism and all it encompassed–the wisdom of the sages, its values, Torah study, and the calendar of holidays to celebrate with my family and community. But Israel? How did I feel about [...]

by Stacey Zisook Robinson When my son was born, I cradled him against my heart, arms wrapped gently yet surely around his small and fragile body. I would stand, holding him, our breaths mingled, our hearts beating in an elegant call and response, one beat to the next, and I would sway, a slow and gentle side-to-side rock that lasted for the eternity that exists between heartbeats. I could feel his body relax into the motion, like oceans, like drifting, like peace. I loved the simplicity of that rhythm, the warmth of him, the smell of his newness and his [...]

by Evelyne Klein When our (fabulous) Membership Director asked if I would host a Shabbat dinner at our house, as a way to have long-standing members meet new members, I thought:  What a terrific idea!!  There were so many new members we did not know, and members we saw at temple events only.  What better way to bring old and new together, get to know other members better, than around the Shabbat dinner table? I was amazed at the synergies between the old and new members who came: the conversation flowed around the table, with everyone introducing themselves, and topics [...]

by Jason Levine “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Shabbat of Adonai Your God; you shall not do any work.”1 With these words, we received Shabbat. But Shabbat is much more than a cessation of work; it is a holy occasion. Shabbat is a brief respite in time, wherein the mundane humdrum of six workdays dissolves into one spectacular day of calm. But what separates this single day from the other six? The sun does not rise any differently, nor do the flowers blossom any brighter on Shabbat. If Shabbat [...]

By Vicky Glikin(originally posted in Ten Minutes of Torah) Run, run, run.  Do, do, do.  Create, create, create.  I-phones, Blackberries, Facebook, e-mail.  Appointments, schedules, meetings, commitments.  Go, go, go.  If we think we are busy, just imagine how busy God must have been in the first six days of Creation when light, darkness, the heavens above, the earth below, day, night, bodies of water, birds, animals, insects, plants, and people all needed to be envisioned and created.  Having completed all of this work: “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because on this day God ceased from all of [...]

by Cantor Alane Katzew(originally posted in Ten Minutes of Torah) There are so many ways to transition in life. We have our daily rituals that accompany us from waking to work and back again to our home life. Once we bid Shabbat goodbye at Havdalah by extinguishing the braided candle in wine at the moment of separation between holy and mundane, we often step back onto the treadmill of life until Shabbat comes once again on Friday evening. The shift from our work-a-day world back to the world of the sacred can prove a bit more challenging. We can bring [...]

by Tina Wasserman(originally posted in Ten Minutes of Torah) I imagined her eyes smiling as her gleeful voice responded to my question over the telephone; I had just asked this Dutch-born Octegenarian, “What was it like to celebrate Shabbat growing up in Holland? She told me how it was a special day for her. It began, in summer at least, with her older sister taking the children to a Jewish store before sundown to buy a treat–usually a pickle or the national Dutch addiction, licorice. They got dressed in clean clothes and the table was set in all the finery befitting [...]