Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

The Kittel The story is told that Elijah the prophet once showed up to a wedding dressed as a beggar. “Please sir,” he asked the father of the bride, “May I come in and have a bite to eat.” Seeing this disheveled man standing before him, the father of the bride ordered to leave –…

A Good Year Good evening. Once again, on behalf of the Cantor and myself, I want to welcome you to our High Holiday services.  Some of us have been together greeting the New Year for some time now – others have joined us this year for the very first time. To all of you, I…

The Songs of our Lives It was really an extraordinary sight!!! A totally unexpected, amazing and startling scene!! During our congregational trip to Israel this summer, we visited Masada, King Herod’s mountain fortress in the Judean desert, the site of the last stand of the Zealots against the Roman Legions in 72 CE.  Our group…

Regaining our Sense of Purpose The year was 1936. The Olympics were being held in Germany, and two Jewish men, Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, were in Berlin to compete as part of the US Track and Field Team. Glickman was eighteen years old at the time, and scheduled to complete on the 4×100 meter…

Enlarging our Tent Last week I attended a fascinating Webinar hosted by an organization called “Jumpstart.” This was a webinar held exclusively for rabbis across the United States to share the findings of a comprehensive survey done this past year on Jewish giving to charitable causes. Previous surveys have found that  people in the United…

We The People For me, one of the most significant things about our first congregational trip to Israel this June was seeing Israel through fresh, bright and clear eyes.  Although I have traveled to Israel many times by now, there is, of course much I have not seen. Yet it was quite amazing to me…

Justice and Trayvon Martin This summer I had the opportunity   to do some readings that I had put off for too long. One of these readings was a book entitled The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. Wilkerson,  a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, writes about one of the great untold stories of the twentieth…

What Makes a Person?  It happened again last week, as it has happened countless times every year , in every synagogue, in every country of the world, in every era. We gathered for mincha/havdalah services last Shabbat hoping to have a minyan so we can call up a person to the Torah for the very…

How should one address the spiritual leader of a synagogue? When I was a seminarian at the Academy for Jewish Religion, I had a student pulpit at a small synagogue in Holyoke, Massachusetts. One of the first questions the President of the congregation asked me was, “How should we call you?”  This is a crisis…

In a few days it will be Mothers Day. Of course,we should not need a special day in the year to honor our mothers — every day should be “Mothers Day”. The idea that we should respect and honor our mothers each and every day is part of the Ten Commandments. Caring for and honoring…