Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

It happens three or four times a year. I will be sitting in my office and I receive a call from a Chaplain at a hospital or a social worker in a nursing home. Upon hearing from the family that they are Jewish, the Chaplain or social worker contacts me on their behalf. “There is…

Rabbi Mark Greenspan tells a story about Chanukah that he heard on a visit to Cuba two years ago. The Island of Cuba had, at its height,  a Jewish population of about 15,000 people, mostly in Havana. As a result of the Cuban revolution, 95% of the Jews left the island.  Although Jews were discriminated…

This coming Sunday morning, our congregation will host our fourth annual “Season of Twinning Event”. Members of our Beth Shalom community will join together with members of the local Muslim community to feed the hungry. We are part of an international effort to both feed the hungry and to build relationships between Jews and Muslims.…

There is a well-known story about the Israeli diplomat who was giving a news conference. A reporter shouts to him, “Mr. Ambassador-in a word, how are things”. “In a word?” he responds, “Good!”  Another reporter says to him, “Can you give us a bit more? — How about two words?” “In two words”, he says,…

This evening, in honor of Veterans Day which we observed last Wednesday, I am going to tell you a little known and long forgotten story of courage. The courage that I am going to tell you about was not ONLY about courage on the battlefield.  It is also about the courage to overcome bigotry and…

The Syrian Civil war has been called “the worst humanitarian disaster of our time.”  It has been estimated that there are 7.6 million Syrians that have left their homes for other parts of Syria, and 4 million Syrians who have fled to other countries — two million to Turkey, a quarter million to Iraq, a…

Thank you to Barbara Bernstein for sending me this prayer composed by Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, California El Maleh Rachamim — Compassionate God,We pray not to wipe out haters but to banish hatred.Not to destroy sinners but to lessen sin.Our prayers are not for a perfect world but a better…

As we are today witnessing a new round of violence in Israel, it is important to remember that there are people of goodwill on both sides who are working toward peace and a shared vision of the future of the State of Israel. On our congregational trip last May to Israel, we visited the Center…

Listening to our Prayers In his 2002 debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer introduces us to the mythical village of Trachimbrod, Ukraine, circa 1791. The village has 300 citizens, all of them Jewish. This shtetl is divided into a Jewish Quarter and a Human Three Quarters. In the Jewish Quarter, everything of a…

The Courage to Dream “If you will it, it is not a dream”. This is perhaps the most famous Jewish quotation of the 20th century. It was written by Theodore Herzl, Jewish visionary and founder of modern political Zionism. He was referring of course, to the ages long dream of the Jewish people that they…