When we think about Hanukkah, we think about miracles — the miracle of Judah Maccabee, who fought for freedom against the Greek-Syrian oppressors. And the miracle of the single cruse of oil that miraculously burned for eight days and eight nights. These events occurred more than 2,000 years ago, in the 2nd century A.D. And as they have for millennia, Jews the world over have celebrated these miracles in a festival of lights known as [...]

On Saturday, Oct. 12, along about 7 p.m., magic happened at 519 Fourth Street, right here in Greenport. Following a day-long schedule of Yom Kippur services, it took only a magic minute to transform the community room into a haven abuzz with activity, chatter, and the good fellowship of friends and neighbors. Together, we had come through the rituals, the liturgy, and what we had discovered after a hard look at ourselves and our thoughts [...]

When did you last move from one domicile to another, downsizing in the process? Maybe you have yet to experience that upheaval, or having done it, you might rather allow the passage of time to swallow up that memory. The selling, the giving away, the trashing — what goes in which pile? The sorting, the packing — only to discover that what you can’t possibly live without, alas, can’t possibly fit in the new space. [...]

At the time of my growing up years in the small town of Burlington, New Jersey, where synagogue life was an important part of the close-knit Jewish community there, I looked forward every year to the approach of the High Holidays. Not that I claim to have been a pious youngster, but a couple of days free from the rigors of schoolwork, when my non-Jewish friends were conjugating verbs and calculating the areas of circles [...]

Just the other day, I saw something I had never seen before and, in fact, never expected I would ever see. I gasped audibly at the gesture, and felt my eyes tear up that such a thing was still known, still practiced in a world that worships speed, efficiency, productivity and their various cousins that fuel competitiveness and our zeal to get it done, get ahead. Do we always have to be the most important [...]

You never realize how much stuff you have until you try to move it — from here, where you and your family may have lived, collected, and saved a half-lifetime of possessions  — to there, where a comfortable but more intimate nearby space for a single occupant must s -t -r -e -t -c -h to its limit to contain all that you say you cannot live without — plus accommodate one 12-pound pussycat [...]

The phrase “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch” jumps to mind as I venture here that nominated routinely means elected. Might not happen. A dark horse candidate could emerge, wresting the presidency from my hands and leaving me with egg all over my face for daring to write presumptively. Not until Congregation Tifereth Israel’s Annual Meeting in June will the election of officers for the coming year take place. Although past experience indicates [...]

  By now, thanks to the Tikkun Olam group’s whiz-bang volunteer delivery corps — Tom Byrne, Veronica Kaliski, Bill Packard, Suzi Rosenstreich, Madelyn Rothman, Cookie Slade, Rena Wiseman, and myself — and yes, with assistance from the USPS, which has made its rounds unhindered by snow, rain, heat, cold or gloom of night — you have received your yellow candles. Keep them at hand, for with them we will observe Yom Ha Shoah, and memorialize [...]

Memory is flawed. Images and details surface in the mind and, from those bits, a composite of a past experience emerges. Sometimes the memory is blurred, lost in a haze of maybe’s that the passage of time has largely swallowed. Siblings central to a family happening may have different recollections of how an event unfolded — unique perspectives and points of view on the same experience, even though all were present and participating. For sure, [...]

As I write this message for the March issue of The Shofar, the snowfall that began a few hours ago is deepening on my property. From the windows of my office here at home, I can see it accumulating, hanging heavy on the pine trees. It is still February as I write, a time designated to observe Black History Month. And like every year at this time, and just a night or two ago, [...]