It would perhaps be a wonderful thing for Nethanyahu and Abbas to meet despite this event. It would be an even more wonderful thing if President Obama, who has yet to visit Israel, could exercise some sage thought process and make a visit hoping to coax both leaders into a meaningful détente. I suspect that this kind of meeting might mean political suicide for both Netanyahu and Abbas, but the prospect of peace should not slip away.
Would that this could happen. I am not hopeful.
We cannot...
Does the Torah contain universal wisdom? This is a question that I am frequently asked by other clergy.
I like to point out that we are blessed with a wonderful faculty that we call memory. Torah tell us not to forget the things we have seen and experienced on the trek to the Land of Israel.
So perhaps the motivating notion here in the torah is about remembering.
I wonder then how we can look at memory and see what it does for us.
What do we fear the most. For each it is...
Particularly at this time of the year, as we approach the December dilemma when we are bombarded by elements of Holydays and festivals to which we don’t always relate, or relate differently, we need to ask ourselves this question. Does the Torah contain universal wisdom? This is a question that I am frequently asked by other clergy.
I like to point out that we are blessed with a wonderful faculty that we call memory. Torah teaches us not to forget the things we have seen and experienced...
When she thought she had reached the bottom, a light dawned in her head. She began to see that she did not have to solve all the problems at once. Remembering that she had responsibilities that kept here busy every day, she decided that if she could make it through one day at a time, she would feel better. And that is exactly what she did. I was dying to learn what became of her children. She told me that one was an astronaut, one a computer programmer, and one had become a grade school teacher. I...
I learned that Yoga has a spiritual center, just as does my love for Judaism. I learned that Yoga places within the individual the need and desire to commune with oneself and be at one with the inner forces that drive, shape, and mold our very being. I came to see very quickly that the heart of Yoga, not the physical manifestation of the practice per se, was closely related to the Sefardi understanding of mysticism. What exactly that is perhaps is difficult to know. One can study mysticism for a...
A wonderful story is found in Midrash Rabbah. We are told of a mortal king who with the power of the exchequer mints many coins on a regular daily basis. He directs his treasury to make a mold and use it often to produce coins of the realm. In fact every coin is exactly like every other coin. However, God creates humankind from the same mold but no two individuals are exactly alike.
The rabbis use this story to remind us that there is no such thing as the common man. We are each uncommon....
