Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

Do you remember the movie, “Meet the Parents”?  It starred Ben Stiller as a prospective son-in-law and Robert Dinero as his father-in-law to be, Jack.  Greg, the character played by Stiller, is a male nurse from Chicago who visits his girlfriend Pam’s home intending to propose marriage. Once there he finds he has to pass…

We studied the poetry of YehudaAmichai (above) with scholar Rachel Korazimin her Jaffa home.  It is wonderful to be back following our nearly two week pilgrimage to Israel. Sixteen of us from our congregation, joined by a son and his 84 year old father from the Boston area, traveled the length and breadth of Israel,…

Not all Parashas, that is, the weekly Torah portions, are equally welcomed by Rabbis – or by congregants!  One could say these are to Parashas that we love to hate.  Bar mitzvah boys and bat mitzvah girls cringe in horror when they find out they need to write a D’var Toah on this week’s Torah…

As most of you know, I have been active in the Chicago Board of Rabbis since I arrived in the area seven years ago. I have served on the Executive Board for four years, the last two of which have been as Executive Board secretary. Recently I was nominated to serve as VP of the…

Did any of you see Chicago Tonight on WTTW Channel 11 last Tuesday night? He interviewed two Chicago rabbis, Brant Rosen and Andrea London, about the recent elections in Israel. Rabbi Rosen, who recently resigned from his pulpit at the Jewish Reconstructionist Synagogue in Evanston, represented the far left’s opinion on Israel. Rabbi London of…

I am Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph from Congregation Beth Shalom in Naperville. I want to thank you for the opportunity to participate on this panel to address the issue of hate crime. Hopefully our discussion this evening will help raise our awareness on this extremely important   issue that ought to concern us all.   What…

Religious symbols courtesy of cliparts (The following is the text of remarks that I made as a member of a panel sponsored by the Parent Diversity Advisory Council of the Indian Prairie School District 204. The panel was on creating a welcoming school environment for students of diverse religions. It took place on March 18,…

Last week Friday night we held our annual scout Shabbat to honor our brownies and girl scouts, our cub scouts and our boy scouts. At the service I told a story you may remember from the High Holidays. It is the story about a little boy standing on the beach throwing starfish into the ocean.…

The Book of Exodus is somewhat misnamed. It is misnamed because only the first five chapters of the Book of Exodus actually deal with the Exodus from Egypt. The middle chapter, or parasha, Mishpatim, is a chapter on laws that govern society. The final five chapters are concerned mostly with the erecting of the tabernacle…

A Jewish Moroccan Sound Archive In my previous post I wrote about a group of Moroccan Muslim students, “Mimouna”, who are dedicated to preserving the knowledge of Jewish contributions to Moroccan society in a country which is inexorably losing its Jewish population. In a conference room at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Casablanca our group…