Parashat Behar-Bechukotai (Leviticus 25:1-27:34) By Rabbi Hayley Goldstein “So, I heard you’re a rabbi. Isn’t that groovy?” Vivi said, making her way to my garden bed in an N-95 mask and gloves. Vivi and her daughter are farmers who generously volunteered to help a novice like me figure out where and how to plant my vegetables. As we approached the raised bed, I pointed to the little green and purple sprouts coming out of the ground in tight gatherings of... Read more
Parashat Emor (Leviticus 21:1-24:23) By Frankie Sandmel A common refrain in my conversations these days is the question: What is time, really? If you’re like me, your hours and days are blending together, one Zoom call leading into another, into another, into another, until the day is over and it’s time for the next one. In a blink, it’s been weeks of shelter in place. Or maybe you’re like my partner who works in health care, and whose days have... Read more
Parashat Acharei Mot-Kedoshim (Leviticus 16:1 – 20:27) By Rabbi Minna Bromberg Early on in our self-isolation, I posted on Facebook that we had managed to make chocolate chip banana bread and that — much to my glee—the other members of the household declared it “too sweet.” My post made it pretty clear that I was perfectly happy to have more sweet banana bread just for me, yet fully half of the comments I received were some form of suggestion for... Read more
Parashat Tazria-Metzora (Leviticus 12:1-15:33) By Rabbi Jane Kanarek, PhD Tazria-Metzora describes a series of incomprehensible plagues, ones that affect skin, clothes, and homes. Skin erupts with scaly white affections, clothes and walls become streaked with green and red. The procedure for a person with a skin affection involves examination by a priest, isolation, and when healed, sacrifices, washing and eventually full reintegration into the community. In the book of Leviticus, this skin disease appears to be a matter of the... Read more
Parshat Shemini (Leviticus 9:1-11:47) By Rabbi Adina Allen For the last five weeks I, like most others in this country who aren’t essential workers, have spent every day at home seeing no one off a computer screen other than the people who live in my house and the occasional neighbor that walks by at least six feet away. This period of time has been full of so many emotions. Over the course of a day, grief, anxiety, sadness and fear... Read more
By Rabbi Jeffrey Summit Abraham Joshua Heschel taught that our spiritual tradition “begins with a consciousness that something is asked of us.” But what is asked of each of us at this moment as we navigate family, work, friendships and Jewish celebration from a distance? Or deal hour after hour with an intensity of closeness if we live isolated together with a small group of family or friends? What is asked of us in a world where Zoom has replaced... Read more
Parashat Tzav (Leviticus 6:1-8:36) By Rabbi Jim Morgan For someone in my field of geriatric chaplaincy, this difficult moment of social distancing is fraught with a painful irony. A significant portion of my job involves reducing the social isolation of the older people in my communities by engaging them not only with one another but also with the general public, to foster face-to-face relationships between residents and younger people in the context of shared meals, religious services, and learning opportunities.... Read more
Parashat Vayikra (Leviticus 1:1-5:26) By Lydia Kukoff Between the months since I was assigned Parashat Vayikra and last week when I actually began to think about what I was going to say, so much has changed. COVID-19 has entered our world and seems to permeate our every thought and action. Routines are gone, contexts changed. No one, nothing seems safe. We are physically distant from one another. Normalcy is stripped away, leaving only vulnerability and dread. It is in that... Read more
Parashat Vayakhel (Exodus 35:1-38:20) By Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld First, a confession. I am among those already exhausted by the amount of time I am now spending in front of a screen, rather than in the physical presence of other human beings. Please don’t get me wrong. I am grateful—deeply and daily—for the technology that is allowing us to stay connected to one another during this period of “social distancing” and to overcome, at least a little, the heightened sense of... Read more
Parashat Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35) By Cantor Ken Richmond Purim, the annual topsy-turvy holiday that we celebrated this week, provides an opportunity for thinking about God’s presence and absence, God’s quality of seeming alternately hidden or revealed, as we listen to the only Biblical book without God’s name and wonder whether the plot twists are ruled by God’s will or by lottery, and whether the vicissitudes of the world are meaningful or capricious. This tension seemed even stronger this year, the... Read more
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