Blog

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...

To me, summertime has always been about journeys. Trips to camp, the mountains and the beach. Pilgrimages to Israel and meet-ups with friends and family members. So, it is fitting that we always read Parashat Matot-Masei in the midst of the summer months. Matot- Masei recounts in great detail the forty years of Israelite journeys through the desert.

Over the past few weeks, like many of you , I have taken a few trips.  Last...Read more...

We are writing to update you about a significant staff transition that is presently taking place. Samantha Berinsky, our Senior Manager of Congregational and Community Management, has announced her departure effective August 9th in order to join Repair the World as the Atlanta City Director. We are delighted that Samantha will continue to serve as a Jewish professional for this rather impressive organization.

At the urging of Rabbi...Read more...

Each evening, as we are driving home from Temple Sinai I ask Rafi,  “What is your rose?” and “What is your thorn?” Roses and thorns, the more child-appropriate way of saying blessings and curses. 

As I ask Rafi these questions, I too ask myself, “What is my rose and what is my thorn?” I try to take a mental inventory of some of the most poignant images, both good and bad. This week, it was easy to...Read more...

We spent July Fourth Weekend on Cape Cod visiting friends who summer there each year. We were in Woods Hole which is the home to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, one of the premier marine biology centers in the nation that draws hundreds of students there each summer to study. One of the most endearing things that happens there is the July 4th parade. It is not your typical Americana-type parade, it is a Science Parade where all of the...Read more...

During a meeting last week, a NY-based rabbinic colleague shared the following story. She and her wife took their ten-year old nephew to see the recently released Top Gun movie.  As he had not seen the first Top Gun, my colleague told her nephew a bit about the two main characters in the original, “Maverick” and “Goose,” explaining that they were best friends but that Goose sadly died at the end of movie (sorry if that’s a...Read more...

There are times when the choices of others challenge us to live our values. I had one such experience when, in January of 2021, my wife, Rebecca, and I had a sit-down conversation with our son, Evan, about his Bar Mitzvah ceremony which would take place in 2022. Evan, who we know is rather shy and reserved, abhors being the center of attention while at the same time relishes his Judaism and the rituals of Jewish living. Rebecca and I crafted...Read more...

Buffalo. The Taiwanese Church in California. And, because these things come in threes, Texas. Earlier this week our newsfeeds were filled again with reports of a(nother) school shooting, this time in Texas. And, once again, broken-hearted, we allowed our tears to flow and our rage to boil.

We know that 19 children who were days away from finishing 4th grade now lay dead, as do two adults, in the latest mass shooting. ...Read more...

“The strangers who reside with you shall be to you as your citizens; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”-Leviticus 19:34

Now is the opportunity for us as Temple Sinai to fulfill this mitzvah. Temple Sinai has been assigned to help settle a Refugee Ukrainian family. This project is supported by Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta and...Read more...