Rabbi Marc D. Rudolph

A few weeks ago, my seminary sent out a fundraising pitch that was hard to refuse. The letter said that if we contributed to the fund raiser in the next two weeks, our gift would be matched by an anonymous contributor up to a certain amount. My contribution to a cause I believed in would…

When I was in the eighth grade my friend Ted accosted me excitedly one morning before class. “I have a hilarious joke that I just learned,” he said. “There were two bears in a bathtub. One bear said to the other, ‘Pass the soap please’. The second bear said, ‘No soap radio’.” Ted began to…

Judaism has always been more about belonging than believing. When Ruth expresses her desire to join Naomi following the death of Ruth’s husband, rather than return to her native Moab, she says, “Your people will be my people, your God will be my God”, (Ruth 1:16) preferencing “peoplehood” over belief in God. The most famous…

“Moses and Aaron assembled the congregation in front of the rock; and he said to them, ‘Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?’ And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, and the community and their beasts drank. But God…

We tend to think of “folk music” as music with no known composer that arises spontaneously out of a culture and that is passed down orally from one generation to another. The Hebrew song, “Eretz Zavat Chalav U-Devash” is one such folk song. The four words that compromise the lyrics of this song are first…

At the end of this week’s parsha we have the commandment to make fringes on our garments, called “tsitsit”. The tsitsit are placed on the corners of our prayer shawl. Most of us wear this prayer shawl when we attend morning services. It is customary to recite this biblical passage as the third paragraph of…

Our Torah reading for this week opens with God telling Moses to instruct Aaron on the lighting of the seven branched menorah. The text continues, “Aaron did so….” The sage Rashi comments on this text. “This verse comes to praise Aaron that he did not change.” What does Rashi mean, “That he did not change”?…