Gevurah: The Strength of Setting Boundaries
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Genius will not. Education will not. Persistence and determination alone will solve the problems of the human race.” Calvin Coolidge This second week of the counting of the Omer (taking us from Day 8-Day 14) is connected to the Sefirah of Gevurah. […]
Counting of the Omer Week Two: Gevurah
A reminder: As many have asked—we count each day of the Omer starting at nightfall. So, the first day of the week of Gevurah will start this Saturday night (and the entire next day until nightfall on Sunday is Day 8). If you forget to count one (entire) day you continue to count—each day is […]
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
This current week of the counting the Omer is the week of Chesed (the day to day intention is included in the more detailed blog). This week of Chesed is a reflection on love—our capacity for love, how we share it, how we can lose our balance in love and how it serves us to […]
Counting of the Omer: Week One
Our counting of the Omer this year will pick up on a theme we began to address in last year’s count. This year our intent is to develop the idea of the seven week count as a seven week step program for change. With the end in mind, the final week of the count, corresponding […]
Counting On It
The Basics: 1. We will be counting 50 days (7weeks plus an additional day—the 50th –which is the holiday of Shavuot—the receiving of the Ten Commandments at Sinai). 2. This count is a recount and a new count. It recounts the process of the Jews leaving Egyptian slavery and journeying 49 days in the desert—their […]
Productive Counting
We are just over a week away from counting the Omer—a fifty day count from Passover to the holiday of Shavuot—commemorating the journey the Jews traversed from Egyptian slavery to becoming a nation with the Torah as its religious covenant. This year we will again look at the fifty day count as a step program […]
Providing Definition
A number of our students subscribe to word of the day and today’s word, appropriately, is vernal. Vernal stems from the Latin word vernus meaning “pertaining to spring.” It is related to the word “verdant.” My love of language and words has instilled a curiosity in how words come into being. For instance, what is […]
Elevating Your Game
Starting this week there will be 64 and by the following weekend there will only be 2. I am referring to the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, fondly called March Madness. For those who love the sport this is its highlight. The elimination process yields our national collegiate basketball champion. One team of players will taste […]
Purim Reflections
Dear Sally (Stich) and Sally (Kurtzman): I wanted to thank you both for conceiving, nurturing, delivering and parenting our Kabbalah Live! speaker series. Last Thursday we were inspired by the 15th speaker you arranged (yes, we are three years old), the Adventure Rabbi, Jamie Korngold. In my study I have a shelf that is now […]
Aligning with Time
Our timing is off. You may not have felt it, but we are not in alignment and so we need an adjustment. Every 4 years in our “solar” calendar calculations we add one day a year—the designated day is February 29th. Why is the day added to February? According to historians, February was the last […]