From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

From April 10, 2021

I heard a story on NPR this week that kind of blew my mind. They were talking about how, since the start of the pandemic, requests for plastic surgery procedures have gone up something like 85%. Plastic surgeons shared that they are getting so many more requests that they have had to hire additional people just to field those phone calls. They are working overtime, late into the night, trying to a...

You do not have to be Jewish to love Shtisel , the fabulous Netflix series about a Haredi family in Jerusalem.  While this family is Haredi, their problems are human and universal.  Anyone can relate to them.  Season 3 was just released, and one vignette is so poignant it captures the complexity of saying Yizkor. Shtisel, the family patriarch, has been a widower for seven years.&nbs...

From April 3, 2021.

If you know teens who play hockey, you know how all important it is for them to get their time on the ice.  That time is limited and hard to come by.  Hockey parents are wont to drive their young hockey stars to the ice rink at 6 in the morning. In a place like Seaforth, Ontario, the ice rink manager, Graham Nesbitt, had a quality problem.  There was only one ice rink.  But hoc...

How are you? We’re conditioned to answer, “Good,” “Fine,” “Okay,” or, perhaps if you are like me, “Thank God.” When we are in person and someone asks you this question, the response comes automatically – a habit, a construct of polite conversation. But from the comfort of your own home or wherever you are, behind the privacy of a screen, let me ask you again. And let me invite you to pause before...

Tom Ammiano struggled in high school. A teenager in the late 50s, he was gangly and effeminate, with a high-pitched voice. Even though he wasn’t out of the closet, everyone knew that he was different, and they bullied him mercilessly for it. Back then, homophobia legally enforced. Same-sex partnerships were criminalized. Being gay was seen as a mental health issue, and one deserving of ridicule an...

From March 27, 2021

This week a member of our community told me something that was so interesting, so unexpected, so profound, and so previously unknown to me, that I have been thinking about it pretty much non-stop ever since.

From March 20, 2021

From our earliest childhood days, we read a story – told through multiple characters in multiple ways – which always follows the same orderly and optimistic script: a young girl falls in love with a doting prince, who whisks her off to a gleaming castle where she lives in luxury and attendant joy all the days of her life. The princess lives “happily ever after.”.....Except when she doesn’t.

One fine afternoon I was listening to Fresh Air on NPR, and the interview totally drew me in. Terri Gross was interviewing a woman who did something out of her ideals and idealism. It was self-sacrificing. It took her time, a lot of it. It exposed her to danger, a lot of it. What was so compelling to me about the interview was that she had to explain that her mother, herself a person of high ideal...

From March 6th, 2021.

We have heard about IQ, the Intelligence Quotient, a measure of our intellectual capability – our book smarts. More recently, we came to understand the critical complementary role of EQ – Emotional Quotient, or people skills. Now there is a new Q on the block – AQ, Adaptability Quotient, our ability to adapt to unanticipated changes in the landscape of our lives. Boy, do we all need a hefty helpin...

From February 27th, 2021.

From February 20th, 2021.

Laughter Really is the Best Medicine Follow this link to view the sermon and watch the live streaming version on our website https://www.templeemanuel.com/rabbi/rabbi-aliza-berger/laughter-really-is-the-best-medicine/

From February 13th, 2021.

If I had to pick a word that captures the place where many of us find ourselves, that word would be stuck.  S-t-u-c-k. Stuck. We are stuck in winter. We’ve been through December’s cold, January’s cold, this past week’s storm.  It’s early February, still cold, still icy.   In previous years we might go somewhere warm.  But not this year. We are stuck in month 11 of the pand...

From February 6, 2021.

Let’s Sing the Songs We Love!!

From January 30th, 2021

This past Tuesday night, erev Inauguration, in a cold classroom with the windows open, and the January wind coursing through, I decided to get a sense of how our seventh graders felt about America.  So I gave each student a sheet of paper that had a prompt on it, and asked everyone to think about the prompt and write their response which they would then share. The prompt was: “ America is the...

From January 23rd, 2021.

From January 16th, 2021.