A story is told of a water carrier, who had two pots on a very long pole that she balanced on her shoulders. Each day the woman left her home and walked down a path to the stream where she would fill the pots with water, put them back on her pole, balance the pole Continue Reading »
A story is told of a town where all of the clocks stopped working (1). The people did what they could to try and repair their time pieces, but despite their best efforts they could not get them going again. No one in town understood the inner workings of the springs, dials, pendulums, and gears – Continue Reading »
Introduction by Rabbi Danny Burkeman I remember trying out for my synagogue youth choir when I was a child. I really enjoyed singing and it also meant that I would get to miss a bit of the regular class. They had a policy that everyone was accepted into the choir and so they let me Continue Reading »
12,233 days, over 400 months, almost 33 ½ years. That was the amount of time between Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a Fatwa, a legal ruling calling on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, and the attack which took place a week ago at the Chautauqua Institution where someone tried to murder Rushdie. In 1988, Salman Rushdie published Continue Reading »
Originally Published by eJewish Philanthropy Since becoming a leader within the Jewish community just over 20 years ago, I have observed a major focus on engaging young adults. We can see that there are services and programs set up with the explicit purpose of attracting young adults to connect with synagogues or to their Jewish Continue Reading »
I have always been an Americanophile; in case you’re unfamiliar with the term it means “a person who greatly admires of favors America or things from American culture.”1 Okay, full disclosure I didn’t actually know there was a word for this, but I googled in the hope that it would exist and there it was. Continue Reading »
Not ever-dying. Ever-evolving, ever-adapting, and ever-reforming In 1948, the Jewish thinker Simon Rawidowicz wrote a paper entitled: “Israel, the Ever-dying People”.[1] In the aftermath of the Holocaust, one might have thought that he was talking about the fact that we as a community have faced challenges from the outside who have sought to destroy kill Continue Reading »
People will often say that we Jews have a blessing or a prayer for every occasion – and they’d be right. Whatever happens there is a blessing to be said, praising and thanking God. When a person survives a near death experience, they recite Birkat Gomel. God is thanked for rewarding the undeserving with goodness, Continue Reading »
