It is the time of year that we read about the Ten Plagues and the eventual liberation of the children of Israel from Egypt. Their thrust into the desert was the moment they became a people — a people of immigrants. For the rest of the Torah, they will be roaming the wilderness. So it’s not surprising that the Torah is full of mandates to love and care for the immigrant. The Torah calls us in dozens of different [...]

By its name, Jerusalem is a city of peace (“they shall regard peace”), and for centuries the object of hope for the Jewish people. The yearning to return to Jerusalem was not simply to return home, but to return to God, with Jerusalem acting as the bridge between earth and heaven. The Talmud (Taanit 5a) brings a midrash where God Himself says, “I shall not arrive in the heavenly Jerusalem (Yerushalayim shel Maa’la) until I arrive at the [...]

Dear members and friends, During the last three weeks, I have been enjoying an incredible trip around the beautiful United States. Visiting the breathtakingly massive rock formations within many of our national parks always reminds me of our fleeting existence. One of the most beautiful — and one hard to remain indifferent to — is the rock formation in Sedona, Arizona. The sandstone and limestone deposits of millions of years, which were once a bottom of an [...]

Dear Members and Friends, It was delightful seeing many of you during the High Holiday season. I hope you are beginning the new year with feelings of renewal, and that you are inspired to begin another year of individual and communal growth. As we were getting ready to begin the High Holidays, our congregation received a beautiful gift. His name is Isaac Karmel, born on the eve of Rosh Hashanah to shul members Joshua and Dawn [...]

Last Shabbat, the Orient Congregational Church hosted an interfaith panel discussion in which I participated with Dr. Don Russo and Sheikh Ghassan Manasra. It was a unique opportunity to share a stage with Christian and Muslim colleagues for an interfaith dialogue. The main purpose of the discussion was to present our respective views of sharing holy sites and spaces, in the Holy Land and elsewhere. In a world that too often opts for division, we [...]

The solar eclipse we witnessed to various degrees this week brought many Americans together and looking up to heaven. In a time when it seems we are drifting to greater social and political polarization, it was inspiring for me to see everyone having a common cause. For such a rare occasion, I drove with friends to North Carolina to view the eclipse in its totality. It may not be that rare as a cosmological phenomenon, [...]