Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

Early this February, four Muslim women rang the door to our synagogue. Alzeena Saleem, Sabrina Zubair, Saima Mussani and Seema Zafar were extremely alarmed and upset about the recent spate of bomb threats called in to Jewish Community Centers throughout the United States. Over the course of three days in January, forty eight JCCs in…

On Tuesday afternoon I was invited to speak on a luncheon panel entitled “Dialogue among the Abrahamic Religions” sponsored by the Muslim Student Association at North Central College. The other panelists were Eric Doolittle, chaplain at North Central College, who represented Christianity, and Aadil Farid, immediate past president of the Islamic Center of Naperville.  We…

I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving with family and friends. Middy and I spent the holiday in Connecticut with our son Mario and his wife and two children. Our son Ariel joined us there. On Sunday all of us guys went on a hike in a game reservation. We hiked about a mile to…

Does it not seem like a long time since the Chicago Cubs won the World Series?  Last Friday night we were all gathered right here in our sanctuary celebrating the historic victory. What has happened to that spirit of joy and solidarity that we all experienced?  What happened?   The   election of Donald Trump to the…

Hank Greenberg was arguably the greatest Jewish baseball player of all time. Born, Hyman Greenberg, in 1911, he played first base for the Detroit Tigers in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Known also as “Hammerin’ Hank Greenberg and “Hankus Pankus”, Greenberg is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1934, Greenberg, his team in…

This week’s Torah reading is from the beginning of the Torah — The Book of Genesis. On Simchat Torah, just celebrated on Monday evening, we concluded the final paragraphs of the Book of Deuteronomy which noted the death of Moses on the border of the Land of Israel. Our Torah reading concludes at that point.…

Two unlikely headlines in the paper in our national press seem worthy of the satirical newspaper, “The Onion”. The first headline is “Donald Trump wins Republican Nomination for President”. The second headline is “Bob Dylan wins the Nobel Prize for Literature”. I, along with many of us sitting here, am hoping for a third unlikely…

One of the themes of Rosh Hashanah is birth and renewal.  We proclaim on this day, Hayom Harat Olam, “Today is the Birthday of the World”. Our tradition holds that the world was created 5777 years ago. Of course, nothing in Judaism is without controversy. In fact there is a debate in the Talmud between…

I’d like to begin my sermon this evening by telling you a story. The story takes place in the 1980’s, before the widespread use of personal computers, before smart phones, before ipads and fitbits and all of the technology that we now carry around in our pockets or wear on our wrists. The story begins…

These final weeks leading up to the High Holidays we are reading The Book of Deuteronomy. The Book of Deuteronomy is part farewell address by Moses, part exhortation to the Children of Israel, part legislative program intended to be put into effect when the Israelites settle the Land of Canaan. Part of this legislation lays…