Blog

I am always excited when it is time for the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. Now (as of yesterday’s opening night) in its 23rd year, the festival has been a staple for me of my time here in the ATL. Consider that it was in the late summer of 2006, my first summer at Sinai, that Jan Epstein and Rabbi Kranz spoke with me about sitting on what was then the film selection committee. They knew of my love of movies and thought it would be a good...Read more...

At a Birthright Israel breakfast I attended this week, renowned author, political columnist and ardent Zionist, Gil Troy, who also serves as chair of Birthright Israel’s Education Committee, was the featured guest. Among the topics he discussed, Troy, a resident of Israel, noted that despite the present turmoil and demonstrations concerning the controversial changes proposed by Israel’s new right-wing coalition, Israelis are - when...Read more...

These last few weeks have been one of the most incredible experiences of my life. I left the country for the first time and what made it even more special was the fact that I was in Israel. I got to tour the whole...Read more...

“God does not ask us to do extraordinary things. God asks us to do ordinary things extraordinarily well.”

This quote, slightly tweaked by Rabbi Sidney Greenberg, offers each of us an inspiring charge as we begin 2023, to enter this new calendar year with a determination to be our best, kindest, and most compassionate selves throughout the year ahead, to face each day committed to accomplishing whatever tasks lay before us with...Read more...

I find it ironic that mainstream American culture often has us wish people peace and joy during this holiday season. But for me, these weeks leading up to Chanukah and New Year's are anything but peaceful. 

I’ve spent a great deal of time running around purchasing gifts; white elephant gifts, adopt-a-family gifts, teacher gifts, gifts for the kids, for the mailman and more and more. The sheer quantity quickly...Read more...

I recently had the opportunity to lead our regular Friday morning Temple Sinai Preschool Shabbat experience. And while this is an element of leadership shared in rotation between the clergy team, I very much liked the session last week. As the weather had dipped just cool enough to prevent us from going outside, the Shabbat experience was held in the sanctuary. And as Chanukah is quickly approaching, I chose to do The Dreidel Song with the...Read more...

“To everything there is a season, a time for every experience beneath the heavens…
A time to plant, and a time to uproot what has been planted…”  (Ecclesiastes 3)

More than two decades ago, in order to provide a worship opportunity for congregants which was distinct from the service at which students celebrate becoming B’nei Mitzvah, Temple Sinai added a second Shabbat morning service to...Read more...

Gevalt!! 
A Yiddish word that has very much entered the Hebrew lexicon and modern Israel. It is a word that the Hebrew press has used continuously in the past few election cycles to characterize the various political parties running gevalt campaigns! The sky is falling…Get out and vote or this party will not pass the electoral threshold and you’ll be stuck with a radical, left-wing government! Jerusalem is burning…Get out...Read more...

Anniversaries can be joyous and they can be solemn. While wedding anniversaries, anniversaries of employment when one has found a job that one loves, and anniversaries of significant and joyous events in life are cause for celebration, we know that there are also anniversaries which are cause for commemoration. And today marks one such anniversary, for it was on October 27, 2018, that Robert Gregory Bowers moved from making hate-filled,...Read more...

We are just a few days away from Simchat Torah, when we end and begin our annual cycle of reading Torah. At the end of Deuteronomy, we find Moses atop Mt. Nebo where he will send his beloved people into the Promised Land with blessing before dying. The scene ends and we plunge into darkness and experience the story of Creation once again.

This leap from physical heights to spiritual depths got me thinking about how each book of Torah,...Read more...

Rabbi Arthur Green wrote about the nature of religious experience in terms of awe, in his book, Seek My Face. He wrote, “[Religious Experience] is as varied as the number of individual humans that there are in the world, and potentially as multiple as there are moments in each of those human lives. In the midst of life, perhaps in a moment of confrontation with birth or death, in seeing great beauties of nature, in love and...Read more...

Last weekend I participated in an interfaith day of learning at Queens University in Charlotte, NC. The gathering was inspired by Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”), the 1965 Papal decree that sought to change the Roman Catholic Church’s relationship with the Jewish people, by stating that the Jewish people were not guilty of deicide (the killing of Jesus). In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Church began to own its part in...Read more...

Rabbi Nicole Auerbach writes, “There are [certain moments] in which it is possible to feel fear and reverence and awe in one single, combined inner experience.” Imagine standing on the very edge of an immense canyon and looking down into the vast expanse, while also appreciating the magnificent colors and rock striations, and also considering a time hundreds of thousands of years prior when the river on the canyon floor first began to...Read more...

I have a small confession to make…

I am conflict-avoidant. Conflict makes me profoundly uncomfortable. In fact, if you say something that upsets me, you will rarely know it. I may talk about it ad nauseam with friends and family, but it is rare that I will actually confront the person with whom I am upset.

It seems I already know what I need to work on this year as the High Holidays roll around ;)

In all...Read more...

The mental picture is one I will never forget. It was at the beginning of my first year of rabbinical school in Jerusalem and several of my classmates and I decided to go to the Kotel (Western Wall) in observance of Tisha b’Av, a historical day of fasting which commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem two millennia ago (and longer). We were truly unprepared, though, for the scene that greeted us: a throng in...Read more...