Shavuot 5780 By Rabbi Michael Shire Looking out the window, I see cardinals and robins, rabbits and squirrels, blue empty skies—in the last two months of isolation, I have come to notice my beautiful environment more than ever before. In this hidden-away state, more has been revealed to me than I experienced when I was outside hurrying to the places I needed to go. This has been a revelation to me. Hidden away from the melee of the world, I... Read more
Parashat B’midbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20) By Rabbi Minna Bromberg `10 Numbers. It says it right there in the English name for the book of Torah that we begin reading this week: this book is about numbers. What does it mean for this suddenly free people to be numbered? Can we be truly free if we are constrained by being one in a number? Yet can we have a functioning society without making an accounting of... Read more
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
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