Daily Kavanot
Writings of reflection by the Stephen Wise Temple clergy.
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Daily Kavanah – Tuesday, September 5, 2023
"To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven." —Ecclesiastes 3:1 Today is 'Be Late for Something Day,' an annual celebration inaugurated by the Procrastinator's Club of America, a Philadelphia-based club founded in jest by Les Waas in 1956. The club describes its purpose as promoting "the philosophy of relaxation through putting off until later those things that needn't be done today." The club first earned local notoriety for its 1966 anti-war protests against the War of 1812. Reading about the playful antics of the Procrastinator's Club of America made me wonder how and why Jewry developed a reputation for showing up late. The association between Jews and tardiness has become so pervasive that the phrase Jewish Standard Time now has its own Wikipedia entry, while an author from The Times of Israel flippantly took his fellow Jews to task for their disreputable tardiness [...]
Daily Kavanah – Monday, September 4, 2023
"You must not exploit the laborer who relies upon their wages, whether a fellow citizen or a stranger in one of your communities. You must pay their wages on the same day, before the sun sets, for their lives depend upon it, lest anyone cry out to God against you and you incur Divine guilt." —Deuteronomy 24:14-15 Today is Labor Day, a national holiday signed into law in 1894 by President Grover Cleveland, mere days before he dispatched federal troops to Chicago to end the Pullman railway union strike, a decision that resulted in 30 deaths, even more injuries, and the imprisonment of several key labor leaders. Though the media, including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times, routinely depicted the striking workers as malevolent anarchists, a federal commission later condemned the Pullman company for exploiting its workers and refusing to negotiate fair wages. Though a purely symbolic [...]
Daily Kavanah – Shabbat Message From Rabbi Yoshi – Friday, September 1, 2023
Did your parents ever tell you, "Just do your best"? Maybe it was before a big exam that you were especially anxious about. The message is clear: if you try your hardest, put in the effort, and do your work with care, the grade you receive doesn’t matter so much. Just do your best. This week's Torah portion describes a collective moment of "just do your best" for our Israelite ancestors: "When you enter the land that your Eternal God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land that the Eternal your God is giving you, put it in a basket and go to the place where your Eternal God will choose to establish the divine name." (Deuteronomy 26: 1-2) These verses describe the mitzvah known [...]
Daily Kavanah – Thursday, August 31, 2023
I spent most of my summer with Taylor Swift. Well, not actually with Taylor Swift, but with her music and her concert livestreams and making friendship bracelets with her titles and lyrics. Wherever we were—at home, in the car, in the coffee shops of our neighborhood—chances are that you would have found us (me and the kids) listening to and/or singing Taylor Swift. On any given day, or week, I find a particular snippet playing over and over in my head—and right now, perhaps fittingly on the last day of this month, it is the song "August," from her Folklore album. If you—like I was at the beginning of last year—are not fluent in Ms. Swift’s catalog, here is the piece I keep hearing: But I can see us lost in the memory August slipped away into a moment in time 'Cause it was never mine The song, like many of her songs, seems [...]
Daily Kavanah – Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Just one week before he died, Oliver Sacks—the noted British neurologist and writer—published what would be his last essay in the New York Times. Titled "Sabbath," it was in fact a reflection on the role that Shabbat and religious identity had played in his life. Touching on his upbringing, his sexuality, and his struggles with faith and connection, he tells the story of a visit to Jerusalem in what would be the year before he died. Sitting with his partner, in his Orthodox family's home, he notes: The peace of the Sabbath, of a stopped world, a time outside time, was palpable, infused everything, and I found myself drenched with a wistfulness, something akin to nostalgia, wondering what if: What if A and B and C had been different? What sort of person might I have been? What sort of a life might I have lived? On this Wednesday morning, [...]