Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

“Only 75 more days until Passover,” says the man who has just found out that temperatures will plunge to 9 degrees Fahrenheit next week. But the days are getting longer, and the sun is rising earlier in the morning, making his 6:30 am commute to morning prayers easier to navigate. Yes, Spring is in the…

This week we begin the Book of Exodus. It starts with “These are the names of the Children of Israel who came to Egypt, Jacob….” (Exodus 1:1) Rabbi Samuel Bernstein of Sochatchov, a Chassidic Rebbe who lived in Poland in the early part of the 20th century, writes about this verse: “When the people of…

And it came to pass after these things that someone said to Joseph, “Behold your father is ill”. (Genesis 48:1) This illness of Jacob’s the first time any illness is mentioned in the Bible. It is taught that Jacob prayed to God to grant people a short illness before their deaths in order to put…

Our Torah portion for this week introduces us to Joseph, describing him as a “na-ar” – a youth. Rashi tells us that in using the term “na-ar” the Torah means to teach us that “his actions were childish: he curled his hair, and he touched up his eyes so that he should appear good-looking.”  The…

In this week’s Torah reading, Jacob flees from his brother Esau and settles down for the night to sleep. Jacob dreams of a stairway stretching to heaven, with angels going up and down. At the top of the stairway is God, who blesses Jacob. When Jacob awakens he exclaims, “Surely God is in this place,…

In his poem, “The Speaker” Louis Jacobs writes of the danger of sleepwalking through life The speaker points out that we don’t really havemuch of a grasp of things, not only the big things,the important questions, but the small everydaythings. “How many steps up to your back yard? Whatis the name of your district representative?…