Last weekend, I had the good fortune of spending Shabbat with our always sold out Sinai Temple Religious School Shabbaton. Before we took out the Torah, a young student read a prayer she composed.
Posts by Rabbi Erez Sherman
Shabbat As Our Center
While we learn about Shabbat in the book of Genesis, when God creates the world in six days and rests on the seventh, we continually learn about Shabbat’s sacredness throughout the entire Torah.
Light and Joy
This morning at the daily minyan, in addition to reading Megilat Esther, we read the Torah reading for Purim.
Breaking the Glass of Joy
For the last week, as a member of the initial Voice of The People Council presented by the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, I met the most interesting people. The council was presented with the major challenges facing the Jewish world today–polarization within, Israel-Diaspora Relations, Jewish and non-Jewish relations, and antisemitism. We worked diligently not to propose a solution but to dig deep into understanding the problems. It was exhausting recognizing that more important than finishing the work is being actively engaged with it.
Bringing the Divine Presence into Adar
I write to you from the El Al airplane en route to participate in the Voice of the People Council, hosted by President Herzog of Israel.
Mourning Our Hostages
In May 2024, I visited Kibbutz Nir Oz. Our group met with an October 7th survivor. We walked around a place where families simply lived and loved the people and the land. As we finished our time there, we stopped at the home of the Bibas family. I had seen the pictures on TV, but this was different. We were standing at their front door. I will never forget: The toys turned upside down, the smiles of the pictures posted on the door, and the green grass with scorch marks. In our sanctuary, every Shabbat, I have looked at the pictures of those little boys as we prayed for their return. It is unfathomable and heartbreaking; no words are enough to describe the feeling knowing Ariel and Kfir Bibas, brutally murdered by the bare hands of Hamas along with Oded Lifshitz, are now home in Israel–not in life but in death.
Under One God
When the first of the ten commandments says, “I am the Lord Your God,” the concluding part of that statement reads, “The one who took you out of the land of Egypt.”
Melody and Memory
One of the beautiful moments of daily prayer by our students in both Sinai Akiba Academy and Sinai Temple Religious School is when they sing the prayer ozi vzimrat yah, an essential verse in the Song of The Sea, that the Israelites sang as they went from slavery to freedom. Onkelos, who translates the Torah from Hebrew to Aramaic, explains it means, “God is my might and my praise.”
Sacred Time
The first mitzvah for the collective Jewish people–sanctifying the moon–is found in this week’s parsha. This law is followed by the rituals of the Seder; in particular the maror, bitter herbs.
As Seen Through These Eyes
As we begin to read the first of the ten plagues, we see a contradiction in the Torah. At the start of Parashat Vaera, God tells the people that they will be taken out of the depths of slavery. It is hard to imagine during the most difficult times of one’s life that they will one day see and experience freedom.
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