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Rabbi's Corner: August 2026 & High Holy Days: #RenewingBalance

7/30/2026

As August begins, already we're on the High Holy Day runway. It always feels too soon, and this year the holidays come "early."

In the last two years, our holiday seasons explored themes of love and strength. The world has needed both, and so have we.

For 5787, it's time to renew balance.

About the Blocked Heart (P. Eikev)

7/26/2026

Living with a fully open heart all the time can be uncomfortable – even risky. Anyone reading this probably knows this truth from life experience.

Most humans learn to protect their hearts. We learn so well that the feeling of a closed heart can be instinctive, automatic, effortless. We can become so inured that we might not know just how closed our hearts have become.

Maybe that's why, precisely now in the Jewish year, Torah calls us to open our hearts wide.

Gently Grasping Spirit (P. Vaethanan)

7/19/2026

Perhaps you've experienced the "beach wisdom" that the tighter we grasp dry sand in our hand, the more likely the sand will fall through our fingers. The way to hold sand is to cup it gently.

Lots of things work that way. (For instance, wise parents know that about their adult children.)

It's not exactly the same with what we call holy – the sacred, spirit, God – but it's close.

The Empowering Distortion Mirror of Memory (P. Devarim)

7/12/2026

Whatever our age, character and inclinations, we can't help but inhabit our memory. All that we have experienced in life shapes us through the lens of what we remember of our past experience, ourselves and other people.

And whatever our age, character and inclinations, memory has a hidden way of reflecting ourselves back at us. This truth becomes especially important as the introspective Season of Meaning approaches.

Our Cities of Refuge (P. Matot-Masei)

7/5/2026

It's summer travel season, which aligns with the approaching spiritual season nine weeks ahead.

Wonderful as travel can be, travelers can tire from traveling – the need to get somewhere, the hurry up and wait, the grip of the wheel. Travelers get bumped and bruised, hot and bothered.

We all are travelers – whether vacationers or journeyers on the road of life. We all need refuge from things that go sideways on our way.

Maybe to our surprise, this refuge isn't a rest stop, or community – but something else entirely.

Rabbi's Corner: July 2026 – We Hold These Truths

7/1/2026

In a hot Philadelphia boarding house, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence that still reverberates 250 years later: "We hold these truths to be self-evident...."

If truths were self-evident in 1776, then we can expect to find them long before – including in Jewish wisdom many centuries earlier.

Rabbi's Corner: August 2026 & High Holy Days: #RenewingBalance

About the Blocked Heart (P. Eikev)

Gently Grasping Spirit (P. Vaethanan)

The Empowering Distortion Mirror of Memory (P. Devarim)

Our Cities of Refuge (P. Matot-Masei)

Rabbi's Corner: July 2026 – We Hold These Truths

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