“I grew up thinking that if you don’t do Rosh Hashana right, then terrible things are going to happen,” Jamie commented during a discussion of the High Holidays. By the nods around the room, it was clear that he wasn’t the only one who grew up with the Jewish guilt strong around this time of […]
I’m pretty sure that there’s a place in hell where the really bad people are trapped in a shoe store with hordes of short people who whine “Mommy” at them – forever. There is a certain dread that fills my being at the end of every summer as we begin our back to school shopping. The […]
Just as you have to pass by the thorn to get to the beauty of the rose, so follows the process of teshuva during the month of Elul.
The culmination of the Three Weeks, an annual time of mourning the destruction of The Beis HaMikdash (Holy Temple) is Tisha b’Av. It is the saddest day of the Jewish year and the most calamitous in our history. So great was our pain on this day as a nation, that each year we commemorate it […]
Noemie Lopian’s father wrote a book called, The Long Night, that sat on a shelf by itself in their house. It was a constant, living in the background of her childhood. When Noemie read its contents, she was 36 years old. What she found out changed the course of her life. It was her father’s […]
The Talmud tells us to do something strange on Purim: drink until you don’t know the difference between “blessed is Mordechai” and “cursed is Haman” (“ad d’lo yada”). This is a surprising statement. Judaism generally doesn’t promote getting drunk. And why would we want to be confused about not knowing the difference between blessing Mordechai (the […]
