This d’var Torah was written for the website of the Academy for Jewish Religion (ajr.edu) A few years ago, for Mother’s Day, my kids gave me a DNA-testing kit from Ancestry.com. Not surprisingly, the results came back as 99% Ashkenazi Jewish with 1%...
Graphic of the post for the commemorative event, NAACP Lakeview Branch On May 12, 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Lakeview, on the other side of Ocean Avenue from Malverne, to support school desegregation. In fact, the Malverne school district, which...
In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not a grandparent, but I had grandparents, and so did my children. Yes, there are some kids who call me “Rabbi Grandma,” but that’s not quite the same thing. Under most circumstances, I would have glossed over Genesis Chapter 48...
After September 1st, when six Israeli hostages were found having recently been murdered by Hamas, just about every Facebook post and email I saw began with, “There are no words…” Including mine. Then each poster or sender went on for about 200-500 words. It’s like Dr....
In this week’s Torah portion, Hukat, we begin by learning about the red heifer, whose ashes would be mixed with water and sprinkled on a person who had been made ritually impure by reason of a corpse, in order to purify them. It’s good information, because as soon as...
Yitro, this week’s Torah reading, is famous for containing the Aseret haDibrot, commonly translated as “The Ten Commandments.” There’s no question that a law code is necessary for a community to be cohesive, to have a set of principles to guide them, and to create a...
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