The Whole Me
The black and white photo to the left is dated 1965. Does that help in identifying who the mother and child are? If you know that the mother’s first name is Ruthie and that she named her son Mark help you with their identity? I began last week to address our insufficient language around race […]
Blind to Color
The mid-term elections this week expose “insufficient” language that serves to harm and divide our great country. It is not just the incessant language of rhetoric that divides liberal and conservative, democrat and republican—it is the insufficient language of color (some would call it race) that causes damage to the ideals of America. As […]
Chasing Peace
For those wanting to access a copy of the KE Rosh Hashanah Prayer Book it is accessible here: http://bit.ly/Y4jV3x I received two emails yesterday, the next to last day of the year 5774 in Jewish Time. One was from a man who was in class with me for a very brief time some six […]
Elephant in the Room
Rosh Hashanah is a time of reflection on beginnings, on the birth story of humanity and on our own births. I was born in the winter of 1958 in Atlantic City. My father had received his rabbinic ordination a year before and the small orthodox synagogue in this sleepy beach town offered him his first […]
Knowing Your Place
Jewish tradition enumerates a 48 fold path to the acquisition of knowledge, one of which is stated simply as “Knowing your place.” The Rabbis interpreted this quality to mean that every person has a unique contribution to make in this world. “The goal,” they say, “is to figure out where you fit into the grand […]
Leap Frog
Who has not heard this one: If you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out, but if you gradually increase the temperature of the water it will let itself be boiled. Happens to not be factual. Frogs indeed jump when the temperature of the water becomes too warm (well before it […]
Be in Touch
One day, a master asked her disciples the following question: “Why do people yell at each other when they are angry?”’ “We yell because we lose our temper,” said one of them. “But why yell, when the other person is right next to you?” asked the master. “We yell to make […]
They are Connected
I usually start the process of writing this blog by reflecting on what has “crossed my awareness” this past week. This week I was contacted by three people that I have not spoken to or thought about for decades. One is a man I used to run with early mornings in Philadelphia, one was a […]
Learned Helpfulness
Delta is the fourth letter in the Greek alphabet. The fourth letter in the Hebrew alphabet is the letter Dalet. Each one of the Hebrew letters has a meaning connected with its original pictogram. For Dalet the pictogram was a door (the Hebrew word for door is Delet). Dalet also refers to a poor or […]
Come Together
I stood less than 5 feet at age 16 when I started college. There were women in my class and students from all walks of life. We were given a reading list for freshman Intro to Sociology and asked to select a book we would report on in class. I chose Will Herberg’s Protestant, Catholic, […]