Noach

Over the summer, we at Temple Micah joined the national conversation about bathrooms, who they are for, and how we talk about them. Our gender neutral bathroom taskforce had its first meeting, a conversation largely centering on labels and language. We all agree that a synagogue should feel safe and welcoming for everyone, and that...

We can imagine how miserable it was for Noah, his wife Naamah, and their whole family, spending nearly a year in the ark, filled with pairs of every animal and bird species – let alone seven pairs of the kosher animals! Yet, it seems that somehow Noah was hesitant to leave the ark. He sends...

My in-laws have a koi pond in their backyard. When we visited them over Sukkot, my son Barzilai—a year and three quarters old—fell in love with it. “Peepch!” he said all weekend—wonderingly, demandingly, enthusiastically—as he dragged me to the pond’s edge to peer into it; “Peepch! Mahm! [Fish! Mayim!]” This was not the first time...

Last week’s parshah, Breshit, shows God feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse. The brand new world that was tov me’od, very good, in Genesis 1:31 suddenly appeared, by the opening verses of chapter 6, to be ra, evil. We were left on a cliffhanger—all the people are evil, God wants to blot them out, and...