Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

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…

What is the main point of having a Seder? Tonight, I want to challenge the idea that the seder held primarily so that we can remember the Exodus from Egypt. Despite the fact that our Haggadah says that we are obligated to tell about the Exodus from Egypt, and that “the more one tells the…

We all know the familiar proverb, “Time is money.”  But in many ways, time is not like money at all. One cannot accumulate time; one cannot borrow time; and one can never tell how much more time one has left in the Bank of Life. Time can certainly be wasted, as money can.   We know…

This week in our Torah we learn about one of the most successful Jews of all time – Joseph. Although he was the 11th of 12 brothers, his father Jacob placed him above his older siblings. This, of course, led to disaster as his brothers were consumed by envy and sought to rid themselves of…