Rabbi Steve Cohen: Yom Kippur Sermon 2020 - Helplessly Hoping Six long months ago, in late March, my sister sent me a link to a video of an Italian teen choir from Rome, singing a song from our youth, “Helplessly Hoping.” [See bottom of this post to view the video -- Ed]. I had never seen anything like it. First one young woman, Irene, singing on her own, in her apartment. She was then joined [...]
Joel Block: The Honest Struggle All of us, throughout our lives, often have to make choices between what we think we ought to do and what we think is good for us. This pandemic has only exacerbated that dilemma. I am a committed Reform Jew, and that means that I believe that it is incumbent upon me, and all [...]
Rabbi Malka Drucker: A Different Four Questions My father wasn’t a religious man. I don’t know what he believed, only what he behaved. Along with suggesting that I not take everything so seriously, he advised, “What happens, honey, isn’t important; it’s how you deal with it. When I had a heart attack at 54, it [...]
Shortly after lockdown I started thinking about Carlos Slim. Until recently he was the richest person in the world (and is currently fifth richest). He was asked to explain why he built gigantic supermarkets all over Mexico that put thousands of small shop owners out of business, and then devoted large amounts of the resulting [...]
Judy Karin: But the zucchini, of course, will be fine. Lately my attention span, never particularly long, has shrunk to roughly the same length as that of a puppy. Whether I can blame this on the stress of the pandemic or not, I can’t say for sure. I just finished jigsaw puzzle #16. The first [...]
Judy Karin: Teshuvah for Everyone? (REPOSTED from 2020) “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” ― Maya Angelou “There’s just something unsustainable about an environment that demands constant atonement but actively disdains the very idea of forgiveness.” ― Elizabeth Bruenig When a friend makes a mistake, [...]
Judy Karin: Teshuvah for Everyone? “I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” ― Maya Angelou “There’s just something unsustainable about an environment that demands constant atonement but actively disdains the very idea of forgiveness.” ― Elizabeth Bruenig When a friend makes a mistake, the friend remains [...]
Barbara Greenleaf: The Fifth Commandment in the Age of Covid While gathering information for my new book, Parents of Adult Children: You Are Not Alone, I found that while most of the older generation takes the fifth commandment, “Honor thy father and mother,” quite literally, the younger generation puts a different and much more casual [...]
Susan Rakov: Covid Wanderings That first week, the moment I break down is when I get the email that CBB is closing its doors. I was involved in a painful decision a few days before to close down 50 offices and cancel thousands of summer jobs, but the emotional impact hits when I read that [...]
Rabbi Ira Youdovin: Welcome to the Jewish New Normal Early in the current era of lock-downs, my friend and colleague Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin suggested that American Judaism was having a Yavneh moment. Yavneh, a small town not far from what is now Tel Aviv, was where the rabbis gathered in the late first century C.E [...]