Toward Shabbat

I was ordained 24 years ago. Two days after I became a rabbi, my father went in for open heart surgery. Just a couple of days ...

It’s May of senior year and I feel stuck. I’m stuck between caring and not feeling motivated. I’ve already been accepted to college—do I really need ...

I’ve been thinking a lot about ego recently: the role that it plays in my life; and my ongoing efforts to infuse accomplishment with humility, ...

“Watch out, Mommy!” my two and a half year old will say. “There’s a monster behind you!” Then she yells “run away!” and signals for ...

We have just completed the yearly succession of holidays and commemorations that take us from Pesah to Yom Hashoah to Yom Hazikaron and to Yom ...

On Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Day of Remembrance of Fallen Soldiers, the sadness and grief in the country is palpable. In the U.S., by comparison, our ...

Without a doubt, Parashat Shemini includes one of the most heart-wrenching, devastating narratives of the Torah. In the midst of our learning about the process ...

I distinctly remember the archeology class I took during my junior year abroad at Hebrew University. We would study the Tanakh in the classroom and ...

I was seven years old when my youngest brother was born, old enough to participate in marking his many milestones on his “Baby’s First Year” ...

I spent last weekend in Washington, DC, with 18 BJ Haverim (7th-grade) students. After a beautiful Shabbat, we welcomed the new week with Havdalah. On ...

“Heavenly Jerusalem, earthly Jerusalem. Never has a city been so beautiful and so blemished, so revered and so reviled, so easy to love and so ...

In this week’s parashah, Tetzaveh, God outlines to Moshe the priestly vestments that Aaron will wear as the high priest of B’nai Yisrael. Aaron is ...

As the Israelites are in the early stages of their long journey through the desert, which we read in this week’s parashah, God gives the people ...

“Finders keepers, losers weepers” is a well known (if morally questionable) children’s adage. But while this argument might win a dispute on the playground, it’s not a ...

It is chilling to read this week’s parashah in light of the earthquake that devastated Turkey and Syria this week: "Now Mount Sinai was all ...

On an evening in June of last year, Judith, a BJ volunteer, and I had the privilege of welcoming a Guatemalan refugee family to NYC, ...

I was 7 years old when I decided I wanted to be Jewish. That’s right. This rabbi began her life as a Catholic. The epiphany happened ...

This past weekend, I was blessed to be with our BJ Teens in Arizona, learning about immigration in America. In our first moments of the ...

I distinctly remember the first time I picked up a book of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s in the library of Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. ...

Last Saturday night, my family and I brought in the new secular year with 4,000 of our closest friends. At 11:30 PM, the four of ...

One of the most powerful Jewish rituals for me, is the ritual of immersing in a mikveh—a Jewish ritual bath made of “mayyim hayyim” (living ...

The World Cup final between Argentina and France this past Sunday in Qatar was spectacular, exhilarating, and electric. Definitely not for the faint of heart. ...

On a good night, in the midst of our despair trying to rock a crying baby back to sleep at 3:00 AM, either my husband, ...

Every month I’m fortunate to meet with a “spiritual director”—a practitioner who is trained to guide people through questions pertaining to their spiritual lives. No ...

Have you heard? Shabbat is all the rage. Just this week, a New York Times article reported on what appears to be a growing trend ...

In the past few weeks, we’ve lived through antisemitic rants and conspiracy theories dominating news headlines, exposing the pervasiveness and rise of Jew hatred in ...

Throughout our Back Home Shabbaton, I was struck not only by the diversity of stories that our members brought into our synagogue but also the accents ...

An old, popular Spanish saying, “Dime con quién andas y te diré quién eres”—“Tell me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you ...

At one stage or another in our lives, we’ve all experienced the feeling of being stuck in a rut. We may look around at our ...

Shabbat wasn’t always a part of my life. It was when I was a child: Growing up, Shabbat was a constant, a day joyfully distinct ...

When my children and I walked home from shul on Simhat Torah, I felt exhaustion and relief deep in my bones. It’s been three years ...

I celebrated becoming a Bat Mitzvah with a Minha service surrounded by family, friends, and a community of people, many of whom had known me ...

As I come to the end of my time as a MTM Rabbinic Fellow at BJ, I’ve been reflecting on what it means to be ...

Some of the most vivid Jewish memories from my childhood took place in the social hall of Lower Merion Synagogue. Every week, after we sang the ...

The very first thing we learn about us humans in the opening chapter of Genesis is that every person is made in the image of ...

On Wednesday morning I received an alert with new information about the mass shooting in Uvalde: The 19 children and two teachers that were murdered ...

In some ways, last Shabbat was like every other Shabbat I have celebrated with You. It was framed by the light of the Shabbat candles ...