Rabbi Sherman - Honorable Mensch-ion

Choosing a challah is not an easy choice these days: Belgian chocolate chunk, cinnamon sugar, kalamata olive, and pretzel are only a sampling of the challot you can have on your Shabbat table. When I grew up in, it was...

When I was in 3rd grade, I learned the parsha Lech Lecha. The Rabbi looked at my classmate and shouted, “Go, Avraham, get out of here!” My friend, named Avraham, got out of his seat, and quickly exited the classroom,...

John Huibers, from the Netherlands, took 4 years and 2 months to build a replica of Noah’s Ark, which he dreams of one day floating to the land of Israel. While each year we read the story of Noah, from...

Over the past six months, we have learned to find joy during challenging times. For each Bar and Bat Mitzvah, we have created a ritual called kabbalat ha-Torah, where we deliver a Torah scroll to the family’s home. For the...

The sigh of relief when we finish a giant project is often the best feeling of the experience. Yet, when we finish the annual reading of the Torah, the most exciting part is what is yet to be. The last...

Eating in a sukkah with a winter coat and gloves was the norm growing up in the northeast. I grew up to believe that a sukkah provided warmth even on the coldest days. As an adult eating in a sukkah...

Have you ever returned to a familiar place from your childhood and it does not look the same? Everything looked bigger and brighter when we were children. Over the years, our life experiences chisel away the ideal and create the...

As I write these words, the night has fallen on the day before Rosh Hashanah. I open the mahzor, like seeing an old friend. It feels so familiar, words recited by my parents, and their parents. Just three generations ago,...

I will always remember the night I stayed up past midnight for the first time. It was Selichot, the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah. The service began at midnight, and as my father would say at the conclusion of each...

As the world has changed, so has the manner in which we celebrate simcha in our community. We must discover joy during heartbreak. In pre-pandemic times, our B’nai Mitzvah would gather with their families and the Sinai Temple daily minyan...