Sukkot By Rabbi Avi Strausberg | Sep 30, 2020 I find that there are days when I don’t leave the house. And some days, before I settle into another day of working from home, of navigating another eight-hour day of my five-year-old’s virtual kindergarten, I step outside and just take a breath, surveying our urban DC street from our front door—the early morning runners, the dog walkers, the garbage trucks, as they pass by. The rest of what I know of... Read more
Parashat Ha’azinu (Deuteronomy 32:1-52) By Leah Carnow | September 22, 2020 I am in a field in a small park in Wellesley, Massachusetts on a mild spring day. My partner and I are alone, seemingly the only people there on a weekday afternoon during a pandemic. I hesitate for a moment, and then, channeling Julie Andrews in the opening number of The Sound of Music, I run across the grass. I shout “ahhhhhhhhh,” as if I could fill the whole world with the... Read more
Rosh Hashanah By Rabbi Or N. Rose | Sep 17, 2020 It is customary to begin reciting Psalm 27 on the first day of Elul, one month before Rosh Hashanah, continuing through Sukkot (Feast of Booths). Like the sounding of the shofar (ram’s horn), this twice-daily practice—morning and night—is intended to help us reflect on our beliefs, questions, hopes, and fears as we prepare for a new year. When I revisit the psalm this year, I find myself drawn to verse... Read more
Parashat Nitzavim-Vayelech (Deuteronomy 29:9 – 31:30) By Rabbi Minna Bromberg A bougainvillea flower. The corner of his big sister’s latest artwork. A bit of cracker lost last week and now found. The foil wrapping from the top of a wine bottle. These are just some of the things that my suddenly-crawling-everywhere eight-month-old has managed to pick up from the floor and put in his mouth in the last few days. As terrifying and guilt-inducing as it can sometimes be... Read more
Parashat Ki Tavo (Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8) By Joey Glick | Sep 02, 2020 A few weeks ago, I came across a song written in quarantine by my friend Adah Hetko: My world is my block my apartment’s my country my state is my bedroom my bed is my body My country’s full of frying butter of frying butter, my country’s full Hearing Adah’s song was a revelation. I have struggled to connect with much of the art and writing created in the COVID... Read more
Parashat Ki Tetzei (Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19) By Tyler Dratch | August 26, 2020 Much can change in only one year. When we read Parasha Ki Teitzei last year, I had just, days earlier, stood under the chuppah (wedding canopy) and married my wife. It was the happiest day of my life; it was a moment overflowing with possibility. That week, a hurricane had been projected to travel up the East Coast, and yet New England was experiencing the clearest, sunniest day of... Read more
Parashat Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18–21:9) By Rachel Adelman | August 21, 2020 “I, Indeed I am the One Who Comforts You.” (Isaiah 51:12) It has been months since the onset of the global pandemic, and we are still reeling from the seismic consequences. The psychologist, Paula Boss, in an interview with Krista Tippett, has given us conceptual language to name what we are all going through: “ambiguous loss,” a term she coined to characterize mourning that has no closure. A person may experience ambiguous... Read more
Parashat Re’eh (Deuteronomy 11:26 – 16:17) By Frankie Sandmel | Aug 15, 2020 Re’eh—perceive, see, consider—I set before you blessing and curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and the curse if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God Our parashah opens with a powerful entreaty from God—you have a choice: follow my ways and be blessed, stray from my ways and be... Read more
Parashat Eikev (Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25) By Rabbi Daniel Klein | Aug 7, 2020 The central drama of much of the Torah is the story of the Israelites leaving Egypt and forming a new way of life according to God. This week’s parashah, Eikev, highlights a question that has been a persistent fear throughout this saga: can we ever really leave Egypt? In an evocative passage in this week’s parashah, the Torah describes Egypt as a place where “you plant your seeds, and water them by your... Read more
Parashat Vaetchanan (Deuteronomy 3:23–7:11) By Yael Werber | July 30, 2020 This week’s parashah begins with the word, “va-etchanan,” meaning, “I pleaded,” and Moses’s plea to be allowed to enter the land of Israel. When Moses recounts that the answer is “no,” that instead it will be Joshua who will lead the Israelites forward, and that Moses’s job to instruct him, we can practically hear Moshe’s inner despair. This is the changing of the guard in real time; the heartbreaking realization that... Read more
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