This past winter, Sinai Temple hosted a basketball team consisting of teenagers from the destroyed kibbutzim on the Gaza border.
This past winter, Sinai Temple hosted a basketball team consisting of teenagers from the destroyed kibbutzim on the Gaza border.
This is a most unique Passover, as we have to be prepared a day earlier than the Seder because Shabbat precedes Passover. In a normal year, we would have another 24 hours to prepare for the Seder, up until the moment it begins.
A few years ago, when I began the podcast, “Rabbi On The Sidelines,” I asked Rabbi Wolpe, “Would you find it acceptable if I used my rabbinic voice in the sports world?” To my surprise, he answered, “One day, that voice will be needed.”
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.
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.
This morning at the daily minyan, in addition to reading Megilat Esther, we read the Torah reading for Purim.
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.
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.
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.
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.”