I write to you this Shabbat still carrying the weight and wonder of a journey I did not entirely plan, which, as it turns out, may be precisely the point. As many of you know, I traveled to Poland this week as part of the March of the Living, [...]

Rabbi Yoshi is currently in Poland leading the 40 person Stephen Wise Temple delegation on the March of the Living. This Shabbat he shares some reflections from their visit to Auschwitz. On the morning of Yom HaShoah, this past Wednesday, we visited the Kraków Ghetto. Then we walked to [...]

Passover is our time of joy and liberation. It's a time of release, of going forth from bondage to freedom. It's a time of hope, a time of “l'shana haba'a b'Yerushalayim!” This makes the tragic loss this week of the Gershovitz family all the more heartbreaking. Vladimir Gershovitz, the family patriarch, [...]

After the seder each year comes the Sabbath of chol ha-mo’ed Pesach (the intermediary days of the holiday). The question is no longer just, “What does the story mean?” It is the urgency of: “What are we going to do with it?” Passover does not end when the seder concludes. In some ways [...]

To offer a sacrifice in ancient Israel, you needed fire. And since sacrifices were offered daily, the Torah instructs the priests in this week’s parasha to kindle an אֵשׁ תָּמִיד (eish tamid)—a fire that never goes out. Inside that fire, the Kedushat Levi—Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740–1809)—sees two kinds of [...]

As a kid growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, March 17 meant remembering to wear something green to school—or risk getting pinched by a classmate. Today, that date carries a very different and far more meaningful resonance for me: it marks the birth of our synagogue’s namesake, Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise. [...]