Musical Monday - Cantor Kerith Spencer-Shapiro
For everything, we give praise. Can we find space to give praise during trying times? When we are challenged, can we settle our minds and bodies and find a way to bring praise even into the most difficult experiences?
Watch V’al Kulam Composed by Meir Finkelstein performed by Susan Rosenstein, Cantor Kerith Spencer-Shapiro and Cantor Tracey Scher.
Teachable Tuesday - Ellie Laycook, Religious School Director
Being comfortable with being uncomfortable. To live fully, you must be willing to step into the unknown, now more than ever. Our digital and global world requires it. You must be willing to challenge yourself to grow and change. And change feels uncomfortable for most of us. Your fear and anxiety and discomfort are natural, human reactions to life.
Wisdom Wednesday - Rabbi Morley Feinstein, Emeritus
Black Lives is a Jewish Matter
These last weeks in our community we have seen a great outcry about Black Lives Matter. We have witnessed the innocent hurt and die, there have been cries and accusations, police violence and more deaths, calls for reform in the face of massive injustice. We stand with the good and the right. Torah teaches us to have have one law, one legal system, one standard, for all who are in the land.
We faced such racism, injustice, poverty and other moral issues in the 1950s and 1960s. There were Jews who supported marches and protests for civil rights and others who felt it was inappropriate. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr was deeply supported and profoundly influenced the members of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, who marched alongside him, went to jail with him in the South, and protested with him.
Why does the Torah teach, “When you light the lamps, the seven lamps shall give light in front of the lampstand?” We need the light of justice now, we need the light of righteousness now, we need the light of mercy now. And who among us shall bear the torch with the flames of freedom and peace? Each of us is the lamplighter.
May we bring such light to a darkened world.
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