Happy Hanukah everyone, This shabbat, we read the parsha (Torah portion) called Vayishev which means, “And he sat,” as in, “And Yaakov (Jacob) sat in the land of the journeys of his father, in the land of Cnaan,” which is the first verse of the parsha. I tend to look at the usage of the word sitting, in the way English uses the word squatting. Squatting means more than just sitting. It also means to sit in a place in … Continue reading
Hello from the heart of darkness… Ok, maybe I am exaggerating, but we are coming into the darkest week of the year, the week of the new moon closest to the winter solstice. And what do the children of Yisrael (Israel) do during the darkest week? They light candles! Now perhaps I should have saved this intro for the shabbat that falls during the week of Hanukah, but I couldn’t resist using it here. We’ll see how it fits into … Continue reading
I hope everybody is doing well. This week we finish the book of Genesis or Breisheit as it is referred to in Hebrew. We also saw the end of Jacob/Israel and Yoseph. Before Israel passes from us, however, he does give us some final pointers on how to interact with people. The parsha (weekly Torah portion) starts out with Yaakov/Jacob knowing he is near death and so he asks his son Yoseph to swear to bury him at the ancestral … Continue reading
Hanukah begins just as Shabbat is going out. This reminds me of what rabbi Aaron, the rabbi of a shul I prayed at when I was in Jerusalem, said a few years back. He shared how Hanukah is a time of juxtaposition between the individual and the community. I want to take it a step further; I want to talk about the juxtaposition of free will and fate. Now before anyone asks about free will versus haShem (God) being all … Continue reading