Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

Forgiving our Worst Selves Had I been a rabbi in the Middle Ages, charged with the task of choosing a prayer that would open the services of the holiest day of the Jewish year for the next thousand years, I might not have chosen the Kol Nidre.  The Kol Nidre is not even a prayer…

Our Promised Land Yitzchak Epstein was the first to understand the challenge. Back in 1907, Epstein, a writer, linguist and pioneer in the instruction of Modern Hebrew, published an essay entitled “The Hidden Question.” Epstein was a Zionist. He supported the settlement of Jews in Palestine.  He noticed that one issue had been completely ignored…

Finding Spirituality in the Most “Unlikely” Places I used to wear my yarmulke on airplanes but I stopped a few years ago. Wearing my yarmulke would guarantee meeting some very interesting people. There was the Afro American minister who went on a Jewish Federation mission to Israel and returned with a greater understanding of what…

Take Off Our Shoes Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of the New Republic, wrote a book a number of years ago called Kaddish. It is a meditation on the year that he spent attending synagogue reciting Mourners Kaddish for his father.  He writes, “It occurred to me today that I might spend a whole year…

Something momentous has happened in Naperville, and I want to share that with you this evening.  I have been attending a class called “Total Body Fitness” twice a week for the past six years at Edward Fitness Center. It is taught by a woman named Kathy Lee – she has a last name, but nobody…

The Hidden and Revealed This week, every time I turn on the television or open a newspaper, or read online,  I hear  about  – the   crisis in the National Football League. Now, , as many of you know, I am a NFL fan, although the Bears are only my second favorite team – And after last…

Our parasha this week instructs the Israelites not to offer sacrifices in any place that they may see, but only at the places that G-d may indicate. Earlier in the Torah sacrifices are offered throughout the land of Israel – Abraham, for example, offers sacrifices in multiple sites. By the time the Israelites are about…

Some Thoughts on the Deaths of Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall This week we lost two great American actors: Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall. Fellow Americans and people from all over the world were shocked and deeply saddened by the unexpected news of Robin Williams death by his own hands. Many of us have lost…

The Answer to our Prayers Yesterday morning our adult study group read the first chapter of the Book of Lamentations – the scroll that we read on Tisha B’Av. The first chapter describes the destruction of Jerusalem and the demoralization of its inhabitants in 586 BCE. Jerusalem’s enemies wreak death and destruction and  Jerusalem’s so-called…

I Am For Peace ….. Since I last spoke from my pulpit so much has happened that it is difficult to know just where to start. While I was on vacation I constantly thought about what I wanted to – no, needed to — talk about when I returned.  As I was visiting the Holocaust…