“I have no problem with the melody,” my daughter-in-law told me, “but those lyrics are so violent. I am just not comfortable exposing my children to them.” That’s how I ended up sitting down to write kinder, gentler lyrics to the Passover faborite 'Chad Gadya.'
The heroism of the women who made Passover possible is a strong and accurate answer to those who claim that women always play a secondary or subordinate role in Jewish thinking. An orange does not make their case. Telling their story does.
The faces in the photo that hangs in the new synagogue in Bad Segeberg haunt me. They seared themselves into my brain the first time I saw it, and they do not let go.
What were these 26 souls thinking when – in hiding – they celebrated Purim in 1936? Their eyes and their smiles betray fear, and their resolve to celebrate the festival with joy.
It was a blessing for me to study Psalms with mentors at Hebrew Union College and Vanderbilt Divinity School. Now, I study Psalms almost every day.
As part of a recent interfaith Holocaust memorial service, I delivered a sermon at the historic St. Giles Cathedral, the Mother Church of Scotland; I’m told I was the first rabbi ever to do so. I consider it more than a coincidence that the event took place on the 45th anniversary of my father’s death, a connection that is particularly stark because my father was a Holocaust survivor.