Eish Zarah: The Feeling of Being Foreign
I had never been inside Perth Amboy’s quaint, two room art gallery on the outskirts of this heavily Hispanic town in Central New Jersey. What brought me inside at this moment, nearly four years after I moved to Perth Amboy to be the rabbi of Congregation Beth Mordecai, the remaining synagogue in town, was not...
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May Your Clothes Never Wear Out
This d’var Torah is sponsored by Bob Rottenberg in honor of his good friend and sofer, Rabbi Kevin Hale of Western Massachusetts, for above-and-beyond work reconstructing his aging tefillin. It was torture wandering in the desert, those forty years, and the Israelites let everyone know it. Over and over, throughout the books of Exodus and Numbers,...
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The Land of Strangers
The midrash teaches that the first human/adam was created with soil from the ground / afar min ha’adamah from every direction, meaning from every place, so that no matter where the first human’s progeny wandered, they would still be at home. Wherever a person dies and is buried, their bodies will not be strangers to the soil,...
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Justice and Compassion (Parshat Shoftim)
Commentary on Parshat Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18 – 21:9) Parshat Shoftim opens with the injunction of setting judges and officers within your gates (Deut. 16:18). The proximity of Parshat Shoftim to the month of Elul has given way to an interesting inner connection, brought by several Hasidic masters (Avodat Israel, Devarim, Shoftim 1 ; Sefat Emet,...
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Reaching Past Our Boundaries
Commentary on Parshat Metzora (Leviticus 14:1 – 15:33) One of the most powerful experiences I had during my rabbinic training was serving as a hospital chaplain. I practiced chaplaincy with a group of five other people on the path to becoming clergy of various faiths, and we were trained by a supervisor – an ordained...
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Seeing Through the Smoke
Rabbi Joey Wolf urges us to find hope for the New Year in each other.
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Vayera: Two Models of Governance
Rabbi Burton L. Visotzky reflects on the sins of Sodom and modern-day parallels in this d'var torah on parshat Vayera.
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“Who Tells Your Story?”
Today a fierce battle rages over the telling of American history. Politicians on either side of the political spectrum are fighting to control the historical narrative taught to children in schools. Is the story of America one of heroic struggle and benevolent, exceptional rule? Or is it a story of a colonizing power that exploited, oppressed, and exterminated non-white peoples?
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Finding God with Open Hearts
When analysis or argument overrides wonder, do we risk ceding what we’re seeking in the first place? Do we risk hardened hearts like Pharaoh, even if our aim is holy?
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