Rabbi Guzik - A Bisl Torah

R’bono shel Olam, Master of the Universe, do not allow our hearts to become complacent. We cannot afford to turn off the televisions or shut off our phones. Our babies—young women, men and children have been heart wrenchingly torn from...

This past Wednesday, a personal dream came true. I met Andrea Zuckerman from the show, 90210. For several years, I would sit with my father and sister and then later my UCLA roommates and watch Brenda, Brandon, Dylan, Kelly, Donna,...

I recently taught a class in which a group of women discussed what distracts us when we pray. At first, the answers were benign: our children, someone else’s child, the sounds of the cars outside, our own personal worries, etc....

Doesn’t it always feel busy? My husband and I have a favorite conversation: remarking on the busy nature of the past few months and predicting that the following weeks are sure to be less chaotic. I bite my tongue as...

I am writing this bisl at 4:00am. Jet lag due to arriving home just last night from Krakow. A long day of over twenty hours of travel. And yet, writing in the early morning feels as if I stand between...

When we utter the words, “Never Again,” what is our intention? To pay homage to the six million Jewish souls that perished in the Holocaust…yes. To commit ourselves to understanding the waxing and waning and ever present current of anti-Semitism…yes....

It all tastes like Passover. You know exactly what I mean. The potato chips taste like the pretend cereal which tastes like the pretend yogurt which tastes like the pretend chocolate chip cookies. It all tastes the same. Bland, flavorless,...

So many of our rituals start and end with light. Shabbat begins with the lighting of candles and ends with the flickering flames of Havdalah. On Passover we begin the festival with bedikat chametz, the searching of our homes for...

We are created to witness and embrace heartache. A close friend of mine relayed an experience she encountered at the mikveh. The mikveh is a pool of water used for ritual purposes. Women and men immerse in the mikveh before...

In my various conversations with congregants, this question resurfaces time and time again. After the body quiets, does the soul live on? Basically, what happens after you die? Judaism offers a variety of answers. Dr. Eitan Fishbane, associate professor of...