Rabbi Guzik - A Bisl Torah

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...

Rabbi Sherman and other delegates from Sinai Temple ran in the Jerusalem marathon. What you may not know is that they ran for a beautiful cause. As their feet pounded the holy stones of the old city, our members held...

For the last two Purim carnivals, I dressed up like Queen Elsa. The decision was quite deliberate. A rabbi dressed up like Elsa? Every little girl and boy ran up to me, gave me huge hugs, took photos—and parents proceeded...