Category: Festivals

Every Day, A Voice Comes Forth (Shavuot)

5/17/2026

Where does our "belly barometer" come from? How do we know what is just and right?

This week, the Torah cycle suspends for Shavuot, our festival anniversary of the revelation at Sinai, and our collective communion with the One we call God.

Though our community opted not to schedule a Shavuot celebration this year due to Memorial Day weekend (we'll have a mini-Yizkor online), it's still an important important chance to consider our source of revelation, justice and rightness.

Redeeming Life's Wilderness (P. Bamidbar)

5/10/2026

I intend my weekly Torah writings to be about more than the Torah portion. I tend to see in nearly every portion both the flow of spirit and community far more than myself, and universal values that transcend any particular time, place and context.

But right now, for personal reasons I see Torah reflecting back at me my own situation. – and in particular my own personal wilderness, what I might learn there, and how I might redeem it.

Even so, I sense that my present experience isn't much different than most everyone's at one time or another. As for me, perhaps also for you.

Rabbi's Corner: May 2026 – On Receiving Torah & May Highlights

5/3/2026

Fittingly for this month that leads into Shavuot, our festival of receiving Torah, I write these words on the evening after Nancy Heller's bat mitzvah.

I write these words about how we receive Torah and what it means for a spiritual community to put Torah at our center –

– the physical scroll, of course, and far more.

Counting Our Days for Spiritual Healing (P. Emor)

4/26/2026

On Torah's sacred calendar, most every holiday begins either at the new moon or the full moon. Our calendar is in the sky, shining down on us every day.

There are two exceptions to this new moon / full moon calendar. One is Yom Kippur, for which we count days since Rosh Hashanah. The other is the forthcoming Shavuot, for which we count days since Passover.

Now we have printed (and digital) calendars, but we still count our days – for an important reason.

When the Liberation Began (Passover 2026)

3/29/2026

As we have for many centuries, the Children of Israel will gather at Passover seders to celebrate the liberation of bygone days.

When we gather with family and friends, we would do well to ask what liberation is, and when the ancient liberation began.

Why? Because the answers bear pivotally on who we are and what Passover asks of us now.

No Easy Walk to Freedom (P. Tzav)

3/22/2026

In olden days, during the week leading into Passover, rabbis gathered folks to huddle about the strictures of keeping kosher for Passover.

Instead, let's huddle about the freedom that we're about to celebrate.

Let's huddle about the Passover that rekindles the eternal flame of our identity and social- justice mission to spread freedom to others who cower in dehumanizing want and fear.

Let's huddle about how, especially now, freedom means bringing light to dark places.

Commanding Joy When the World is a Mess? (P. Terumah)

2/15/2026

Nobody needs me to confirm that vast swaths of our world burn like a raging dumpster fire.

Judaism is about reality-based reality. We do not pretend away trouble or turn a blind eye. We certainly do not fiddle while Rome burns.

Yet even so – precisely so – the Jewish calendar encodes a radical and wise spiritual practice starting now, linked to this week's Torah portion, that at first blush can seem oddly un-real and ill-fitting when the world is a dumpster fire.

The practice is one of Judaism's sometimes overlooked superpowers: elevating joy amidst all.

Rabbi's Corner: February 2026 – Count to Three, and We Go Free

1/25/2026

It happens every month: the moon waxes and wanes, marking planetary time quietly above our heads.

It happens every year: three full moons set our course from winter to spring, from concealed to revealed, from bondage to liberation.

Those three full moons now begin. Ready or not, spring is on its way – and I, for one, am ready.

Out of the Darkness (P. Mikeitz)

12/14/2025

During this Hanukkah week – and now in the wake of the attack on a Hanukkah celebration in Australia – we kindle candles of hope, continuity and community.

We participate in an extraordinary collective act of hutzpah.

We've all known the darkness before the dawn, the anxiety before the knowing, the gauntlet before the triumph. There have been times so dark that we could never imagine light ever penetrating.

And yet.

Rabbi's Corner: December 2025 – A Year's Second Hanukkah

11/30/2025

Thanks to how this year's secular and Jewish calendars interact, the approaching Festival of Lights will be the second Hanukkah of 2025.

Hanukkah is one of Judaism's most popular celebrations. For centuries, our people voted with our candles and community gatherings, as will we several times during the weeks ahead.

In this month's Rabbi's Corner, R. David offers two ways that perhaps we can make this year's Hanukkah uniquely meaningful, rooted in the deep well from which Hanukkah springs.

Don't miss the light shining at Shir Ami!

<<Previous

Every Day, A Voice Comes Forth (Shavuot)

Redeeming Life's Wilderness (P. Bamidbar)

Rabbi's Corner: May 2026 – On Receiving Torah & May Highlights

Counting Our Days for Spiritual Healing (P. Emor)

When the Liberation Began (Passover 2026)

No Easy Walk to Freedom (P. Tzav)

Commanding Joy When the World is a Mess? (P. Terumah)

Rabbi's Corner: February 2026 – Count to Three, and We Go Free

Out of the Darkness (P. Mikeitz)

Rabbi's Corner: December 2025 – A Year's Second Hanukkah

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