As most of you will have noted, yesterday marked 300 days of captivity for the hostages taken on 10/7. 300 days of darkness, privation, abuse and worse. So much has transpired in those 300 days, and yet we find ourselves still praying, still hoping, still advocating and still demanding the r…
One of John Lennon’s last songs, left unfinished and released after his death, was ‘Nobody Told Me’. One line in the first stanza has stayed with me since I was a teenager.
Nobody told me there’d be days like these, Strange days indeed, most peculiar mama!
We’ve all felt the trut…
Though I rarely share thoughts on the weekly Torah portion, I thought that this week was an interesting opportunity to draw pertinent and relevant conclusions from the fascinating narrative.
In this portion, the Moabite King Balak hires the prophet and soothsayer Bilam to curse the people …
In several weeks, we’ll be traveling to Israel on a Unity mission, and we invite you to join us. You can find more information and register HERE.
One of the important elements of our mission will be visiting IDF soldiers recovering from serious wounds at Tel Hashomer hospital. I’d like …
Yesterday, we celebrated the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. It gave me reason to consider that like many, if not most countries, the US was conceived in war. That has been the human condition throughout most of history - as Douglas Murray reminds us in his incredible a…
You’ve probably seen it in a photo or been there. The Hotel de Ville in Paris. Right next to the Seine River on the right bank. You know the famous post-war photo ‘Le baiser de l'Hôtel de Ville’ by Robert Doisneau? It was up on my wall when I was in university, as it was for many Gen …
I’ve got a number of responsibilities at the Federation. Among them is reaching out to members of other vulnerable and minority communities to enhance relationships between us. In the past, I’ve spoken out to console members of the African American community after the terrible mass shoot…
Like many if not all of you, I was overcome with joy when I heard last weekend of the rescue of four Israeli hostages from captivity by Hamas and its ‘civilian’ accomplices in the Nuseirat district of Gaza. Though several dozen Israelis remain in the hands of their brutal captors, this w…
Last year at about this time, I wrote about how, if the love and respect many of us have that informs our support of our friends in the LGBTQ+ community didn’t immediately resonate, that support could also be seen through another prism, of Jewish values espoused by Rabbi Akiva explaining t…
As a member of Generation X, my brain is hardwired to generate pop culture references from the 1980’s when I grew up. In 1986, the British band Genesis released a great album titled Invisible Touch. One of the best songs on that album was Land of Confusion. One of the lyrics was “There�…
Today, the International Court of Justice will render a response to a request from the murderer-coddling representatives of South Africa to demand Israel stop its operations in Gaza. As I wrote this message yesterday, I don't know for certain how their decision will go. But I have a sense th…
A concern has been growing on my mind and the minds of a number of us for some time now. Though we at Federation have strived to bring meaningful programming and opportunities to actively engage in supporting Israel and the Jewish people, there has been a continuing diminishing of participat…
A few days ago, I was spending some time with my elder children, who were visiting from Canada. Later in the evening we sat down to watch a movie - The Old Guard - starring Charlize Theron as an immortal who becomes tired of trying to save the world from itself again and again, until she is …
And the water was for them as a wall, from their right and their left.
Exodus-Shemot 14:29
On these latter days of Pesach, tradition tells us that the Children of Israel approached the Reed Sea, pursued by the might of the Egyptian Empire. Of course, the miracle of the splitting of the sea…
Many of us head into the first days of Pesach having spent the previous couple of weeks cleaning and preparing. We are drained, exhausted.
When I was about 12, our family was in the kosher food business, and we had just opened a second location a few months before Pesach. It was always a b…
