Rabbi Sherman - Honorable Mensch-ion

When do you remember God? Our response is often, "When God remembers us." We wait until a life cycle, be it joy or grief, to bring the Divine Presence into our lives.

I am often asked, "Is Rabbinic life different in a pandemic?" The answer is simple: It is a new normal. Thursday is my new favorite day of the week. Blessed with over 100 b'nai mitzvah this year, Thursdays are now Torah delivery day.

Family movie time is now a pandemic staple in our home. We introduced our children to the movies of our youth, reliving our childhoods vicariously. This week, we focused on time machine movies. In “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure,” two high school students bring back historical figures to their school for their history project, engaging these individuals in conversation. This entertaining film led us to a simple question, “If you could go back in time, who would you invite?”

My daughter's third grade writing assignment this week was to write a paragraph about someone who is not thanked enough. "Nitza, my aunt, I love her very much. She is a kidney transplant nurse and she saves lives. I think because she does this, we should thank her more often. Here are a few reasons why. 1. She saves people’s lives. 2. She brings joy to her patients and helps them get through their hard times. I think we should appreciate Nitza more often!"

In a world filled with division and strife, Martin Luther King weekend connotes unity and togetherness. In King’s speech, entitled “Our God is Marching On,” he tells the story of asking a woman who had been marching for hours if she was tired and why she didn’t simply drive. Her response was, “My feet are tired but my soul is rested.”

Prayers are simply words. On Wednesday evening, I stayed up to the wee hours of the morning glued to the television. After sitting next to my daughter with her jaw dropped early in the afternoon, a nine-year-old asking what was happening in our country’s capital, I felt the urge to witness how we would continue as a nation.

There are passages of the Talmud that you learn in the sacred books and are purely theoretical, and there are pieces of Torah that become your reality in the blink of an eye.

As a family, we have searched for COVID-friendly activities to engage in during school vacation. Besides virtual entertainment, we happened upon Urban Adventure Quests, an online platform which sends you on scavenger hunts through different neighborhoods. In exploring the streets of Los Angeles just a few miles from our home, we recognized landmarks and sculptures that we never noticed, even while driving by hundreds of times in prior years. The clues given to you are extremely specific, inquiring on how many steps lead up to certain buildings, details of the architecture of City Hall facades, and questions on gorgeous murals. 

Over this pandemic, our appearances have changed: hair grown out, suits and ties shed. We have not seen each other for almost an entire year.

Our youngest child is fascinated by the Shabbat candles. He loves to watch them glow in the dark. It is a different type of light that comes from the normal ceiling light he sees everyday of the week. He was...