Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11–34:35) By Rabbi Shira Shazeer | March 2, 2021 Purim Lano. Pesach a la mano, “Purim has passed, Pesach is at hand,” goes the first line of a well known Ladino song, written by Flory Jagoda. This year, as Purim has come and gone, and Pesach is just under a month away, the familiar twin feelings of joy in the holidays and anxiety at the work it will take to prepare for them, come with a unique new... Read more
Tetzaveh and Shushan Purim (Exodus 27:20 – 30:10) By Naomi Gurt Lind | February 12, 2021 Some years ago, following a particularly magnificent performance, I found myself in my center-balcony seat of a Broadway theatre, holding my breath. The show had long since ended, but I didn’t move. I was magicked into rapturous submission, couldn’t bear to break the spell. Minutes passed. Stagehands scurried here and there, moving props offstage, sweeping the floor, resetting furniture for the next performance. Slowly the energy... Read more
Terumah: Exodus 25:1–27:19 Rabbi Micha’el Rosenberg | February 16, 2021 When my spouse and I got married, we received many useful gifts: dishes and a food processor and an extremely well-designed picnic backpack. We also received, from a relative who is hopefully not reading this, a lovely, but very heavy and exceedingly impractical sculpture of a bowl of fruit. Not a porcelain bowl filled with actual fruit, mind you, but porcelain fruit permanently affixed to a bowl made out of the... Read more
Parashat Mishpatim (Exodus 21:1-24:18) By Frankie Sandmel | February 9, 2021 There’s a moment in Fiddler on the Roof where a villager says, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” And Tevya responds, “Very good, that way the whole world will be blind and toothless.” The villager is quoting from this week’s parasha, Mishpatim, which is almost entirely full of laws. (Tevya might be quoting Ghandi, but we’ll leave that aside for now.) In these chapters, we... Read more
Parashat Yitro (Exodus 18:1 – 20:23) By Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer | February 3, 2021 An excerpt from Thunder + Silence, a melodic midrashic performance piece imagining the divine voice at Sinai. This section is based on Midrash Rabbah 5:9. בשעה שנתן הקב’ה את התורה It was the hour of revelation on Mount Sinai. We were all there. We stood trembling as the mountain shook, as thunder ripped through the core of the earth. And we heard a voice. THE VOICE. It Called to... Read more
Parashat Beshalach (Exodus 13:17-17:16). By Yael Werber | January 26, 2021 Sometimes there are moments in time that are so intense, so momentous, so anticipated that when it finally comes time to experience them regular prose fails, and the only way to truly capture them is through poetry. The parting of the sea in Beshalach is a moment like that—the emotion and excitement held in those first steps of freedom intermingled with the regret, despair, and fear at what they left behind... Read more
Parshat Bo (Exodus 10:1–13:16) By Cantor Ken Richmond January 20, 2021 We celebrate this week the birthday and the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who often retold the story of the liberation from Egypt as a model for modern-day redemption and transformation. Simultaneously, as we read this week about the dramatic and violent events that brought about political and societal change for our ancestors in Egypt, we are preparing for a transfer of power in our country, feeling a... Read more
Reflections on Parashat Va’eira (Exodus 6:2-9:35) By Rachel Adelman | January 14, 2021 I wrote this reflection on Parashat Va’eira in January 2020, before the onset of the pandemic. It has been revised and republished with the understanding that it is uncannily more relevant now than it was a year ago. Every day we wake up to the horrific news of more sick, more dying, while many are isolated, impoverished, suffering from depression and anxiety, with trauma lodged within the individual and collective... Read more
Parashat Shemot (Exodus 1:1–6:1) By Rabbi Ebn Leader January 5, 2021 To our most beloved teacher, Moshe, Who drew us out of slavery in Egypt And brought us to the place where we could receive Torah Who translated the sound of thunder into letters carved in stone So that we could follow the letter trail and carry our hearts back through thunder Who led us through forty years of wandering in the desert, through years of going nowhere, And who stayed... Read more
Parashat Vayechi (Genesis 47:28 – 50:26) By Susan Shevitz | December 30, 2020 In this age of COVID, we’ve all seen the scenes in newspapers and online. Desperate for connection to his mother in the ICU, a man recruits a nurse to bring in his picture and read what he has written to her on a card. A daughter FaceTimes with a member of her father’s medical team, who holds the phone near him so they can see each other for a... Read more
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