Blessing the Children
My parents first became active in my childhood shul when my mother walked up to the tone-deaf rabbinical student charged with leading services and said, “Richard (my father) will never volunteer to lead the prayers, but he has a nice voice and if you ask him, he can’t say ‘no’ to the rabbi.”...Read more...
Unplugging and Uplifting: Finding Sanctuary in Shabbat
In the famous musical Bye Bye Birdie, two parents, exacerbated by their children’s behaviors, sing the famous tune, “What’s the Matter With Kids Today?” The parents earnestly ask the rhetorical question, “Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way?” It seems that every generation...Read more...
The Many Meanings of Avodah
Avodah, like many Hebrew words, has multiple meanings.
In the Torah, avodah means “worship” and refers to the way that Moshe, Aharon, and the kohanim (priests) of Leviticus offered sacrifices to God on behalf of our people. Later when the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, the Talmudic rabbis re-defined the...Read more...
Our Western Wall
If you have not yet had the opportunity to visit Israel, I highly recommend it — especially if you can go with our rabbis this coming June. My family did just that a few months before my oldest son’s bar mitzvah in 2011. One of the highlights of our trip was praying at the Western Wall with Jews of all...Read more...
immersing in Prayer
There are myriad pathways to the Divine in Judaism. In fact, there is a mystical idea that each Jew has a “mitzvah” that is their mitzvah — their special path to encountering God. My mitzvah is mikveh.
Just as we see it described at the very beginning of the Torah, I have the distinct sense that...Read more...
The Confusing Crossroad Between Ancient Texts and Modern Readers
On a recent Shabbat morning at Beth Meyer, we celebrated an adult bat mitzvah, new adult Torah readers, and a fabulous post-bar mitzvah teen who returned to chant Torah nearly a year after he became a bar mitzvah during a more restrictive phase of COVID. To be honest, it was a rabbi’s dream come true; Torah was...Read more...
An Invitation to Ask
As Jews, we enthusiastically connect Judaism to learning and education. We understand that learning develops when it is impelled by our curiosity. The ability to think beyond “what is?” requires the ability to think critically and to question what we may take for granted. Beyond this, to move our...Read more...
Today's religious school: Torah and Hebrew — but also life skills and community
When we use the phrase “lifelong learning” we are often referring to educational experiences for adults. Those experiences are important and valuable. But learning begins in childhood, with first words, first steps, and in a Jewish home, first Jewish experiences. At Kramer Religious School, we build on...Read more...
Never Stop Seeking
As we all know, learning does not end when you leave school. Every day brings new opportunities to learn, from a random, fun fact to an important life lesson. Obtaining post-graduate degrees seems to be more common than ever, and there are seemingly a million online classes for every topic one can imagine....Read more...
A Rabbi’s Job: Afflict The Comfortable and Comfort The Afflicted
When God commanded Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses our Teacher) to go to Pharoah and say, “Let my people go!”— Moshe was far from enthusiastic.
His response was, essentially, “Who, me?“
Still, fairly quickly, God was able to persuade Moshe that he was the right person for the job. And in the process,...Read more...
Hesed: The HEartbeat of Beth Meyer Synagogue
When I graduated from rabbinical school after six long years of study, we celebrated with a “smikhah” (ordination) ritual in which each new rabbi was invited to share a single Jewish text alongside their name in the event program. As you can imagine, there are a vast array of Jewish texts to choose from, but I...Read more...
