Rabbi Guzik - A Bisl Torah

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...

She asked the same questions over and over again. One of our congregants took her eight-year-old daughter to a nearby senior home to visit the Alzheimer’s and dementia unit. One of our clergy members was leading a Shabbat service and...

Last week, Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David wrote the following message to his congregation: “This Shabbat morning, with God’s help, Rabbanit Alissa Thomas-Newborn will be offering the drasha at B’nai David – Judea, the Orthodox shul of which I...