Month: November 2016

How do you thank a whole community? How do you thank a community who allowed you to be their rabbi before you were ordained? How do you thank a community who gave you their trust during life’s most fragile and most celebrated moments? How do you thank a community who helped you to learn in order to do? As Thanksgiving…

I will go to just about any event that offers free food. The College-Institute advertises a lunch and learn with free food; I am one of the first RSVPs. The synagogue plans to run an evening meet and greet with light hors d’oeuvres; I am the first to volunteer to meet, greet, and — of course — eat. Food motivates…

This summer was one of the most challenging of my entire life. I knew it would be. In fact, I signed up for it. Toward the end of last school year as my classmates were firming up their fellowships for the summer, I made the very challenging decision to work as the rabbinic fellow at Cedar Village Retirement Community. This…

This year, I am intimately involved in the creation of a new spiral curriculum around Torah for the religious school at Isaac M. Wise Temple. While I expected to contribute to the congregation and hoped the project would transform how we learn Torah at Wise, I did not anticipate the transformative impact this process would have on me as a…

This summer I served as the rabbinic fellow at Rockdale Temple in Cincinnati, OH, where I led services and Torah studies, wrote sermons, and developed curricula alongside Rabbi Sissy Coran and Rabbi Meredith Kahan. Although I can easily present the products of my labors, my experience at Rockdale was far more meaningful than a pile of papers. Over the course…