This is a month of preparation leading up to the Ten Days of Repentance. Our tradition is filled with teachings whose purpose is to inspire us to do the work of teshuvah. Here’s a beautiful one [...]

Sunday begins the Hebrew month of Elul, a time of preparation leading up to Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and the beginning of the Ten Days of Repentance (aseret y’mei teshuvah). It’s that time of [...]

I'm visiting family in New York this week. We drove out to Long Island to show our daughters where their mother grew up. We stopped at a farmstand and bought some corn and tomatoes. Long [...]

If you look for it, you can always find something to be distressed about. There is no shortage of tzuris: the Delta variant, antisemitism, the demonization of Israel through ice cream boycotts, wildfires raging out of [...]

Collectively, we are in the period known as the “nine days,” a time of mourning leading up to Tisha B’Av, the day on which, according to tradition, both the First and Second Temples were destroyed. Personally, [...]

As the sun sets this evening, we enter Av, the saddest month of the Jewish year. The first days of Av are the heaviest leading up to the 9th of the month, the day on [...]

Praying for a Miracle We have been reading reports about the building collapse in Surfside, Florida, hoping desperately that survivors will be found. First responders, including a team sent from Israel, are working through the [...]

One of my favorite Hebrew expressions is על טעם וריח אין להתווכח (al ta’am v’reiach ein l’hitvakeach)—“there is no point arguing about taste and smell.” If I like brussels sprouts and you don’t, what’s the use [...]

June is known as Pride Month in America as an acknowledgment of the transformational change in perception around LGBTQ+ inclusion over the past five decades since the Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969. What was [...]