Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

The journal Science recently published an intriguing study of the health effects of long-term space flight. Astronaut Scott Kelley spent almost a year aboard the International Space Station between March 2, 2015 and March 27, 2016. His identical twin brother, Mark Kelley, remained here on earth. At the conclusion of the space flight, Scott and…

Have you ever wanted to simply “cut out” a part of the Torah? There are many parts of the Torah we find very hard to read because we find them uncomfortable, because they clash with our modern day sensibilities, because we find them morally objectionable or simply because we find them irrelevant.  Surely many of…

According to the Book of Ecclesiastes “there is a time to be silent and a time to speak.” Our parasha this week demonstrates a time when perhaps it would have been preferable to remain silent rather than to speak. Our parasha is called “Shemini” and its subject is the anointing of Aaron as the High…

The late comedian George Karlin is perhaps best known for his 1972 monologue on the seven words you can never say on television. Quaint. Of course, that was before cable TV and Netflix – now you can hear all those words, and new ones that weren’t even invented in 1972 – on television! George Karlin…

Contemporary essayist Steve Goodier tells a beautiful story about his 11 year old son, Robert, who was being bullied at the school bus stop by some older boys. Steve called the school principal and was told that the school would call the boys’ parents. He was also advised to call the police. Steve wasn’t sure…

Did you know that Sitting can be harmful to your health? An analysis of 13 studies of sitting time and activity levels found that those who sat for more than eight hours a day with no physical activity had a risk of dying similar to the risks of dying posed by obesity and smoking. People…

That great 19th Century African American educator Booker T. Washington exemplified the power of a simple and modest spirit. A story is told of a day when Washington, then a professor at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, happened to pass the mansion of a wealthy woman as he walked to work. The woman did not recognize…

Last year Rabbi Joseph Ozerowski from the Jewish Healing Network gave a three-part seminar to our Congregation, on “Bikur Cholim”, the mitzvah of visiting the sick. The seminar was designed to increase our awareness of this mitzvah and study some of the classical Jewish texts on the subject. We also hoped that Rabbi Ozerowski would…

In her book Traveling Mercies, Some Thoughts on Faith, American novelist Anne Lamott writes: I was remembering an old story the other day about a man getting drunk at a bar in Alaska.  He’s telling the bartender how he recently lost whatever faith he’d had after his twin-engine plane crashed in the tundra. “Yeah,” he says…

In her 2002 album, entitled “Halos and Horns” Dolly Parton sings a ballad about an old mountain woman who people come to see from miles around. This woman had a special gift. As Dolly Parton tells it: In a little pouch of burlap Tied with a piece of twine There were bones all shapes and…