Daily Kavanot
Writings of reflection by the Stephen Wise Temple clergy.
Each weekday morning, members of our mailing list receive the “Daily Kavanah,” which includes messages of thought, inspiration, and contemplation from our clergy, along with a schedule of events. Every Thursday, the “Daily Kavanah” turns into “Eyes on Wise,” our weekly newsletter featuring the latest news, photos, videos, stories, and tikkun olam opportunities from our community. Sign up and don’t miss out!
Daily Kavanah – Monday, April 25, 2022
This week’s Daily Kavanot will serve as a four-part series, focusing on insights gleaned from the most recent Pew Research Center survey of the American Jewish Community. The summary of the survey’s findings read, in part: “U.S. Jews are culturally engaged, increasingly diverse, politically polarized and worried about antisemitism.” We who dedicate our lives to the Jewish community contemplate these regular Pew reports each time they appear. We take the results into account as we plan our programs, grow our styles of leadership, and even design the very structure of the temple. Over the next few days, I will share some of the more intriguing statistics from from this report, and ask you the same questions which we Jewish professionals ask ourselves, because the Pew data is not just relevant for clergy, educators, and Jewish administrators; it should warrant the attention and response from all those who care about the Jewish future. Today's topic: How do [...]
Daily Kavanah – Friday, April 22, 2022
Last week, the president and vice president of the United States, along with the first lady and second gentleman, hosted “The People’s Seder.” At that event, historian Deborah Lipstadt—recently confirmed by the Senate as the United State’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism—shared a memory of how, each year, her grandfather in Detroit would order a package of shmura matzah from New York. As soon as the package arrived, her grandfather would open it up to make sure that there were six unbroken matzot inside—three for the first-night Seder and three for the second. But strangely, at the very beginning of each Seder, her grandfather would “take one of those precious matzahs whose wholeness was crucial to their use, lift it up, and break it!” Lipstadt suggests that this “tells us that the world is always in some form of imbalance between wholeness and brokenness.” We feel that keenly at this moment, as we witness [...]
Daily Kavanah – Thursday, April 21, 2022
The mystics of our tradition saw great meaning in the counting of the Omer, which is marked each night between Passover and Shavuot. In its cycle of seven days, counted seven times, they saw a parallel to the sefirot, the system by which the Kabbalists understood the Divine attributes. Each week is dedicated to a particular attribute, and each day of that week focuses on the intersection of two Divine attributes. This week, the first of the Omer, we focus on chesed: lovingkindness or compassion. Today is the fifth day of the Omer Hod she-b’chesed: Splendor in lovingkindness On a recent podcast episode, the hosts were lamenting our language limitations in talking about relationships. How is it, they asked, that we can use the same word for someone whose posts we occasionally “like” on Facebook, someone we might wave to from the carpool line, and the person who walks through life—thick and thin—by our side? How, they asked, can we call all [...]
Daily Kavanah – Wednesday, April 20, 2022
The mystics of our tradition saw great meaning in the counting of the Omer, which is marked each night between Passover and Shavuot. In its cycle of seven days, counted seven times, they saw a parallel to the sefirot, the system by which the Kabbalists understood the Divine attributes. Each week is dedicated to a particular attribute, and each day of that week focuses on the intersection of two Divine attributes. This week, the first of the Omer, we focus on chesed: lovingkindness or compassion. Today is the fourth day of the Omer Netzach she-b'chesed: Endurance in lovingkindness כִּֽי־אָמַ֗רְתִּי ע֭וֹלָם חֶ֣סֶד יִבָּנֶ֑ה שָׁמַ֓יִם ׀ תָּכִ֖ן אֱמוּנָתְךָ֣ בָהֶֽם׃ For I have said that the world will be built on kindness, and the heavens will be established on Your faith. (Psalms 89:3) Rabbi Menachem Creditor’s daughter was born right after the attacks on September 11, 2001. To hear him tell it, he looked around and was thinking about the world in which she would grow [...]
Daily Kavanah – Tuesday, April 19, 2022
The mystics of our tradition saw great meaning in the counting of the Omer, which is marked each night between Passover and Shavuot. In its cycle of seven days, counted seven times, they saw a parallel to the sefirot, the system by which the Kabbalists understood the Divine attributes. Each week is dedicated to a particular attribute, and each day of that week focuses on the intersection of two Divine attributes. This week, the first of the Omer, we focus on chesed: lovingkindness or compassion. Today is the third day of the Omer Tiferet she-b’chesed: Beauty in lovingkindness Long a Carrie Newcomer fan, the first time I ever heard “I Heard an Owl” was in a liturgical setting, when Cantor Shayna De Lowe offered it as the community emerged from silent prayer. so don't tell me hate is ever right or god's will these are the wheels we put in motion ourselves and the whole world weeps and is weeping still [...]