Given the great quantity and complexity of halakhot leading up to the festivals of Pesah and Sukkot, we seldom focus on the question of whether to wear Tefillin during the middle days of hol hamo’ed until it is actually upon us. The observant Jewish community is literally all over the map on this subject,…
Category: Holidays מועדים
Open the Gates of Mercy: Yom Kippur 5777
לשנה הבאה בירושלים Next year in Jerusalem! This enthusiastic declaration concludes the most important home ritual in Judaism, the Passover Seder. After hours filled with scripture, songs and symbolic foods designed to reenact the passage from slavery to freedom, we end with the prayer that next year we will celebrate in Jerusalem. The same declaration…
We Have Sacrificed Nothing: Rosh HaShanah 5777 Day 2
“You have sacrificed nothing, and no one!” This powerful statement came from Khizr Khan, a patriotic American immigrant from Pakistan who reveres the US Constitution, and who with his wife stood up in a national forum as grieving parents whose 27-year old son Captain Humayun Khan was killed in action in Iraq defending his unit….
Practicing Judaism: Rosh Hashanah 5777 Day 1
When I was a kid we had a set of toys from my father that was pretty special, because my dad was pretty special, and still is. As a physician who trained in the sixties, he had one of those old-time doctor’s bags at home and he let us play with the tools. There…
Returning from Exile, Accompanied by the Divine: Nitzavim 5777
Chapter 30 of Deuteronomy returns to themes explored back in Chapter 4—alienation from God, exile, and then return. Exile as presented here is both physical and spiritual in nature. This passage reflects a period after the northern kingdom of Israel had already fallen, and the southern kingdom was imperiled (though Ramban voices the traditional view…
Tying Up the Ram, Trying to Be Free: Shabbat HaGadol 5776
The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes taught a course that I took one year in college, and I still savor his exploration of magical realism with our class. One of his grand themes was the elliptical nature of time. Some cultures, he claimed, view time in cyclical terms, with each development merely a return to a…
Babies as Spiritual Giants: Tazria/HaHodesh/RH 5776
Newborn babies are miraculous to see, and even more remarkable to hold. To let their tiny fingers curl around your pinkie and breathe in their new-to-the-world fragrance is divine, but sometimes this pleasure isn’t possible. A few days ago I met a newborn so small that even his parents can’t hold him—at just 2 lbs, this…
Amalek Inside–Zakhor 5776
It is considered a mitzvah this Shabbat for every Jew to “remember what Amalek did to you,” to blot out the memory of Amalek, and not to forget. This mitzvah is easily fulfilled by listening to the maftir reading in synagogue on the Shabbat before Purim, but it is not at all easy to understand the…
Hold Your Hands Up! VaYakheil-Shekalim 5776
Sometimes it is not ornament but infrastructure which is the most interesting and enduring feature of a building. The tabernacle was a beautiful building with bronze, silver, gold as well as luxurious and colorful fabrics. Underneath all that was the acacia wood, atzei shittim, with upright planks that were held together by staves—also made of acacia and…
Clearing the Mind to Hear the Voice: Yitro 5776
What do you feel when listening to the Shofar on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur? It is very difficult to describe the experience of hearing the shofar. There are many regulations and associations that come with the shofar, of course, and some of these may come to mind while we listen to the “voices of shofar.” We…
Joseph for Israel, Joseph for All: Mikketz/Hanukkah
Who is Joseph deep within? As the Hebrew youth rises from enslavement to privilege, from refugee status to rulership, what remains of his core identity? This question is central to the story of Joseph’s life, and is also tied to the festival of Hanukkah, with which Parashat Mikketz is always associated. The Hanukkah story begins with…
God Speaks in the Wilderness: BeMidbar and Shavuot 5775
The summer after graduating college, I went backpacking with a friend in North Cascades National Park in Washington. The sun shone brightly on Lake Chelan as we were ferried deep into the woods, landing at the little outpost of Stehekin to begin our weeklong trek. It was a euphoric beginning, but soon both the weather…
Rabbi Danny Nevins 