Jewish Voices, Jewish Lives

It’s what we do every day. Whether it’s the food we favor…a bagel with shmear… or the drive to repair the world…tikkun olam, we Jews are there, especially in Rockland County. We plan to bring Doing Jewish to you every Friday. Sometimes it’ll be fun, sometimes it’ll be serious.

What do You Choose to See?

What do you do when your good friend does something that really and justifiably irks, even hurts you, but on a day-in-day-out basis, is as reliable and amazing as she can be? What if that generous, amazing nature is why you became friends in the first place? Will her getting it wrong on one …

Being Human

It has been an eventful and consequential week, and I wanted to share a few thoughts, hopefully tying them together in a coherent way.

Tuesday’s Presidential and local elections have left some of our community members disappointed or worried, others excited or motivated, and many of us ho…

We Are All Students

One of the greatest characteristics of the Jewish people is the dual streams of example and exposition in our heritage. Not only do we have primary sources in our oldest, holiest texts, we also have layer upon layer of commentary, questions, answers, and extrapolation on everything from the …

Resilience

A few days ago, I heard a beautiful interpretation of the well known words in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) that we read this past Shabbat. 

 

A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven:

A time for being born and a time for dying,

A time for planting and a time f…

We’re Wide Awake Now

This past Monday, almost 1500 members of our community participated in our October 7th commemoration at Clover Stadium. One of the most powerful elements of the program was the reading by Hillel Rockland student leaders of a poem that touches on the emotions we’ve all been feeling since Oc…