One winter night some years ago I crossed the parking lot of Providence Hospital in Southfield, MI. Looking up, I saw a great cloud of steam rising from the heat grates, dramatically lit by floodlights mounted on the hospital roof. This dynamic swirling above the hospital, combined perhaps with the heaviness I felt in visiting…
Category: 3 Leviticus ויקרא
Sacred BBQ: Shmini/Parah 5774
Spring has arrived, and with it the smell of sacred BBQ. I don’t mean that literally, especially with so many vegetarians in our community, but the confluence of Parshat Shmini and Shabbat Parah means that there is a great deal of attention paid to the selection, slaughter, sacrifice and eating of animals. Chapter 11 of…
The Eyes of the Community: Vayikra 5774
Can you imagine what it would look like if the Jewish people took collective responsibility for creating a righteous and just society? If instead of a squabbling and loosely organized confederation of miniature camps, we had a truly representative Jewish leadership that held itself accountable to the people and to God? I confess that it is hard to imagine such…
Adaptive Optics: Behar-Behukotai 5773/2013
The other night I read a magazine article on the construction of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), an international collaboration to construct the greatest earth-based observatory up in the Andes Mountains in Chile. The technology involved in manufacturing the massive set of primary mirrors, with an effective diameter of 24.5 meters (80 feet), is remarkable,…
Rabbi Danny Nevins 