Category: Shabbat
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Short and sweet.
I delivered the following mini-drash on July 8 at Ohr Shalom. I am indebted to my mom for pointing me to the Talmudic passage I reference. *** Six hundred thirteen. Sound familiar? It should – that’s the number of mitzvot most rabbis tell us are in the Torah. And we should all believe our rabbi,…
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Synchronicity (not the Police song).
I delivered this D’var Torah this morning at Ohr Shalom: *** I really love it when circumstances come together to create a harmonious, pleasant situation. Some refer to this as synchronicity; in my worldview, this is evidence of the existence of God. I don’t see God as an old man with a flowing beard sitting…
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Our Difficult Texts
בראש השנה, בראש השנה… On Rosh Hashana (the Jewish new year) 5766/2005 I had the honor of delivering a d’var Torah at Ohr Shalom Synagogue here in San Diego. I first met Rabbi Scott Meltzer in 1998, and our relationship has evolved and progressed quite a bit in the near decade since. I am proud…
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Spam is NOT kosher; our Shabbat dinner is.
I got my first comment today, and I got briefly excited because it meant someone had found my blog before I publicized it to anyone (including my family and friends), but I was quickly cured of my elation by the content. I duly marked it as spam and let WordPress do its thing. Jenn and…
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By way of introduction…
I guess I should say something about myself, now that this is working, and now that I’ve commited myself to updating it regularly… But maybe not… Perhaps I should just go ahead and keep posting these old divrei Torah, and once I get that out of the way, I’ll start posting current-event, what’s-on-my-mind-at-the-moment blog posts.…
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Tilling on Shabbat
When I moved to San Diego for graduate school in 1999, I made a commitment to myself not to work on Shabbat. Notice I didn’t say “to observe Shabbat,” with its connotations of not driving, not using electrical appliances, etc. My observance of Jewish ritual and practice had been evolving for years, and I was…