How does one start to summarize a year like 2020? A year in which so much was beyond our control. A year of re-learning, re-inventing, re-calculating, re-living. At the end of every year, Google publishes the most searched words of the last 12 months. It wouldn’t surprise anyone to find out that this year, the [...]
Nine years ago, we started a journey together. When I consider that time, a few important thoughts come to mind. Relationships are a motivating force for me. I was privileged to know many in the previous generation — the Levin brothers, Stanley Rubin, Aaron Novick, Sy Brittman, and so many more — and now the [...]
A couple of weeks ago, a man handed my friend Father Roy a fire hose nozzle. “Please return it to its rightful owners for me,” he said. The man, who was a firefighter on Sept. 11, 2001, had been called to Ground Zero a few days after the disaster for search and rescue duty. In [...]
The two days of Rosh Hashanah and the single day of Yom Kippur are three days in our lives filled with awe. More than any others, those days awaken a sense that a biological clock is ticking; it’s time to reexamine. Would one day be enough, or perhaps two? The Bible is replete with three-day [...]
The period of seven weeks, from Tisha B’Av to Rosh Hashanah, is the time allotted to us to rebuild and start anew. This year is different. Even the rock bottom of Tisha B’Av is still wobbling and not stable enough on which to build. Perhaps this is the meaning of the opening of Psalm 24: [...]
On May 31, the media announced the passing of Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm. Rabbi Lamm was the iconic president of Yeshiva University, beginning in 1976, and he went on to become chancellor in 2003, serving in that capacity for the next 10 years. In an incredible bit of timing, the very next day, on June [...]
All of us are guilty of romanticizing our past to various degrees. On the surface, it may seem silly to do so. Why should we attribute more hope to our past than our future? Surely, we set ourselves on a downward slope. Perhaps when our present is dark and our future is obscure, we believe a glimpse [...]
“Yesterday at 5 in the afternoon, we went with Mom to the grocery store, and on the way we saw that our kindergarten was closed. The swings standing between the tall trees, and the flowers seem so small and faded, because our kindergarten was closed...It isn’t very nice to see our kindergarten closed…” Every Israeli child [...]
In his book, Who Moved my Cheese, Spencer Johnson, MD, describes four different ways to deal with an unexpected change in life. He introduces four small fictional characters — two mice and two little people, who know where to get their cheese. One day, the cheese is moved. The four characters, like the four children in the [...]
Shalom members and friends, It’s the beginning of spring. In the midst of everything shutting down, the daffodils have just risen from their death to bloom for another life cycle. This cycle has meaning at this time of coronavirus, and many spiritual Jewish inferences can be drawn. Sometimes, God shakes up the foundations to wake [...]
