My Summer of Remembering
With my mother's death earlier this summer, I've become my family's "Keeper of the Yahrzeit List." So, while some of my friends may be having a summer to remember, I seem to be having a summer of remembering.
Galilee Diary: An evening in Levinsky Park
by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Galilee Diary)
Galilee Diary: Pilgrims
by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Galilee Diary)
Galilee Diary: Red hot chile peppers
...We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna...
-Numbers 11:4-6
Galilee Diary: Summer holiday
It was forbidden to allow the posthumous destruction of Man, God, and - this even for the most secularist of Jews - that hope without which a Jew cannot live, the hope which is the gift of Judaism to all humanity.
Galilee Diary: Summer holiday II
...Zebulun did not dispossess the inhabitants of Kitron or the inhabitants of Nahalol; so the Canaanites dwelt in their midst, but they were subjected to forced labor.
Galilee Diary: Faith and Culture
And the Lord said, “If as one people with one language for all, this is how they have begun to act, then nothing that they may propose to do will be out of their reach. Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand one another’s speech. -Genesis 11:6-7
Tu BiShvat: Happy Birthday, You Beautiful Trees!
My commute to work every morning is not typical. I drive through the Roaring Fork Valley with majestic, now snow-covered, mountains on my left and my right. The sky is often a clear, bright blue, and the sun glimmers off the powdery snow that shifts in the wind. I am the cantor at the Aspen Jewish Congregation, and I certainly feel blessed to live and work in such a beautiful place. This quote from Isaiah is particularly fitting for this part of the country, as the people here are very in touch with the nature around them - often finding their spiritual center while skiing a run or hiking in the hills.
If You Will It
If the idea of Israel as imagined by American Jews sometimes seems like a fantasy that could not ever exist in reality, there is a reason for it. In many way, this country was founded as an impossible dream.
Exodus 1:1-6:1: Moses and the Challenge of Diversity
This week we dive into the second book of the Torah, Exodus. While the book of Genesis traversed thousands of years, Exodus focuses on the evolution of the Israelites as a people for 40 defining years.