Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

Theologian Judith Plaskow writes that it is inaccurate to understand the first verse of the Shema – that God is One – as a statement of numeric specificity.  Rather, she says, monotheism is about the capacity to glimpse the ONE in and through the changing form of the many, to see the whole in and…

The American Jewish writer Abigail Pogrebin wrote an article admitting that, despite attending services regularly for 8 years she was struggling to find in the observance of Shabbat the “supposed tranquility and blissful disconnection of Shabbat, what Abraham Joshua Heschel called, “the palace in time”. She says she can’t seem to pull off Shabbat. Yet…

My Mother is at the Bridge Table  by Leslea Newman My mother is at the bridge table with Loretta, Gert and Pearl, when my father finds his way to Heaven. “Sit down, dear,” she says, patting the seat beside her and barely looking up from the hand she’s been dealt. “The game is almost through.”…

Comedian Seth Rogan  A couple of years ago, the actor and comedian Seth Rogan caused consternation across the Jewish world, when, in an interview, he asserted that as a student in Hebrew school he had been “fed a huge amount of lies about Israel….. They never tell you that ‘Oh, by the way, there were…

Gerry Mendelssohn, our congregation librarian for 40 years, was honored at our Friday night services last week. When an Englishman wants to write a poem of praise, he writes an “Ode”. When a Rabbi wants to write a song of praise, he must write a “Psalm”. But how does one write a psalm? There are…

  Rabbi Elliot Dorff tells the story of how he was once on a plane from Boston to Los Angeles when he struck up a conversation with the man sitting next to him. This man lived in Newton, a suburb of Boston in which many Jews live. Neither he nor his family was Jewish, but…

Shaar Shechem   Today is Yom Yerushalayim- Jerusalem Day. Fifty-six years ago today, Israeli forces entered the Old City of Jerusalem. For the first time in 2000 years, the Holy City of Jerusalem fell under Jewish sovereignty. Here is how it happened: When the 6-day war broke out in 1967, Israel was attacked from all sides.…

  As many of you know last Wednesday was Yom Ha-Atzmaut, Israel Independence Day, the 75th anniversary of the State of Israel’s birth as a nation.  On that day, my class from the One Year Program from Hebrew University in Jerusalem had a reunion online. In 1972 we were  mostly nineteen, twenty years old, college…

  Many of our congregants, both in person, and via Zoom attended our moving Holocaust Remembrance Service last Sunday.  Before I share some of my thoughts about it, I would like to say a few words about the origins for the idea of creating a Commemorative Holocaust Day.     In 1951 the government of Israel…

  One of the central rituals of our seders comes right before the meal. We are told that Rabban Gamliel, the first century sage, held that as part of the seder we have to explain three symbols on our seder plate – the Pesach, the Matzah and the Maror. The Pesach, or shank bone, represents…