From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

An older gentlemen needed surgery for a rare medical challenge. Turns out that the best surgeon in town was his own son. As the father was about to go under, he asked to speak to his son. Yes, Dad, what is it? Son, do not be nervous. Do your best. I trust you. Just remember one thing. If it does not go well, if something happens to me on the operating table, your mother will live with you and your...

Recently, as part of a routine medical procedure, I needed to get hooked up to an IV. Unfortunately, the nurse who did it, while very nice, had a hard time. She poked a needle into my arm and said, oh, so sorry, that didn’t work. She poked a needle into my arm a second time and said, oh, so sorry, that didn’t work either. Let me ask one of the other nurses. Another nurse came and the third time wa...

The main religious value concept for our High Holiday season is  teshuvah , repentance. Given the centrality of  teshuvah  in Judaism, and in the Jewish calendar now, the Torah’s treatment of  teshuvah  is curious indeed. It appears very late in the game. There is zero mention of  teshuvah  in Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, or Numbers.  Teshuvah  does not appear until  Deuteronomy chapter 30 . Why so...

The two lands we love, America and Israel, both have a problem. The problem is real, recurrent, and deadly. The problem showed up in both lands this week. The problem is violence and lack of regard for the sanctity of human life, lack of regard for the Bible’s most important teaching: that all human beings are created in God’s image and therefore deserve to live and to be treated with respect and...

In last week’s class we encountered the Greek myth of Icarus who, ignoring his father’s advice, flew too high and too close to the sun so that his wings made of wax and feathers melted, he fell to the sea, and died. In class one of our learners offered a poignant coda. While the rest of the world did not see and did not care about Icarus dying, his father Daedalus  cared very much . His father gat...

For many of us, this week has been the week of the big pivot. We pivoted from August to September; from summer to fall; from vacation to obligation; from light and breezy summer rhythm to an alarm clock that wakes us up to face the reality of a schedule. Back to school. Back to shul. Back to the High Holidays coming up with their invitation to take stock of our lives. All of which is very differen...

Icarus has so much to say to us now, a few weeks before Rosh Hashanah. According to Greek mythology, Icarus flew too close to the sun with wings made of feather and wax. The sun’s heat melted the wax, and Icarus fell into the sea and  drowned . In 1560, the Netherlandish master Peter Bruegel the Elder painted a masterpiece entitled  Landscape with the Fall of Icarus .  This painting is now display...

August 30, 2025

Inheritance – A Personal Journey of Discovery and Choice. We have no control over what we are bequeathed. Or do we? Rabbi Jamie Kotler teaches Torah and Jewish texts at synagogue communities in the Boston area and beyond. She has served as chaplain at Fireman House (Hebrew Senior Life), and has served on the Boards of The Rashi School, and Mayyim Hayyim, and on the building committee for Newbridge...

Rabbi Rachel Silverman (she/her) first joined the Camp Ramah New England staff as a Rosh Edah (unit head) at the overnight camp from 2005-2010. Many years later, she’s thrilled to be back as the Director of Ramah Boston, our newest day camp. Rabbi Silverman previously served as a congregational rabbi in both Brookline and Sharon, MA, after receiving her ordination from the Jewish Theological Semin...

August 8, 2025 Just about every night, before bed, we read one of Eder’s favorite books, usually a few times in a row. Eder loves many books, but for the past few weeks, his absolute favorite has been Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed. He loves it so much that he often doesn’t have the patience to wait for us to read it to him—he will take it out and read it to himself. He recites the story w...

On January 15, 1997, Princess Diana walked through a minefield in Angola. The background for her walk was the civil war in Angola that raged for 27 years, from 1975 through 2002, which meant that she was walking through a minefield while the war was still going on. When Angola secured its independence from Portugal, a civil war broke out between a Communist faction supported by the Soviet Union an...

I’m sure you’re familiar with the saying: “curiosity killed the cat.” We say it when curiosity leads us down an unproductive or even dangerous path. However, in a fascinating interview with Professor Tal ben Shahar, an expert in the field of positive psychology, he offers this wonderful line: “curiosity might have killed the cat, but it keeps us alive.” Curiosity, says this prominent researcher, i...

July 19, 2025 The most amazing article appeared in the New York Times this week titled “The Tooth Fairy is Real. She’s a Dentist in Seattle.” No seriously, I am not making this up. Apparently twenty years ago, when Purva Merchant was applying for dental school, her boyfriend set up an email account for her using her nickname “the tooth fairy.” Ever since, she has received somewhere between three t...

When she was six years old, Erin Paisan fell in love not only with Camp Mystic in the Hill Country of Texas. She specifically fell in love with the Guadalupe River, which was the life force, the energy, the joy, of Camp Mystic. Decades later she still remembers with perfect clarity the very moment when she fell in love with the river. As she told the story to the New York Times Daily host Michael...

July 5, 2025

Some weeks, when we open the Torah, it’s not clear how that particular parsha speaks to our lives. But this week, the Torah feels so real. It feels like the Torah could easily be written for exactly this moment. So today, I want to do something radical: I want to take a deep dive with you into our parsha. I want to learn with you the story of Korach and what our rabbis teach. And I want to be very...

AJ Helman (they/them/theirs) is an educator and artist with a focus on Jewish and LGBTQ+ theater and education. After graduating from Emerson College with a BFA in Theater Education and Performance, AJ remained in Boston, working in the local theater and film industries as both an artist and a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion liaison. As part of their activism and educator work, they facilitated w...

How did you sleep on Thursday night? When I first learned that Israel’s war with Iran had begun in earnest, I, like so many of you, did not sleep much at all. Because of the 7-hour time difference between Boston and Israel, in the early hours of Friday morning I was able to reach Micah Goodman, our beloved teacher and friend who lives in Kfar Adumim, twenty minutes outside of Jerusalem. What Micah...

I called my brother-in-law Ari this morning in Jerusalem. He and his family spent the night in their bunker. Two of their sons have been mobilized yet again. He shared one story that speaks to this moment. This morning (Friday is typically a day off for many Israelis, kind of like our Sunday, though it is spent getting ready for Shabbat) a friend of theirs has a daughter who was go get married. Sh...

Last week, I went to the bank. The teller was quite friendly. He looked vaguely Middle Eastern and had an accent I couldn’t quite place. We were chatting about the weather and the start of summer as he looked up my account. And then, he asked as he was typing away, “so, what do you do for work?” I paused, looking at him. Should I tell him what I do? Is that safe? What if he hates me for being Jewi...

How do we know when an old era ends? How do we know when a new era begins? Is that happening to us now?   Do we now live in an era where we might be going about an ordinary day and be attacked because we are Jewish, the attacker shouting “Free Palestine.”   It happened in Pennsylvania to the Governor of the State. While Governor Josh Shapiro, his wife Lori, their four children, two dogs, and anoth...

June 3, 2025

Beyond all Consolation: A Jewish Philosophy of Redemption and Tragedy Rabbi Jason Rubenstein joined Harvard Hillel as Executive Director on June 1, 2024 after six years as the Howard M. Holtzman Jewish Chaplain at Yale. Jason’s background is as diverse as Harvard’s Jewish community: a childhood at Temple Micah in Washington DC, formative years studying at Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa in northern Israel,...

I am not a huge fan of rom coms. But there was one rom com I just had to see the minute I heard about it. I was drawn to its title. Its title was irresistible. Its title conveyed the central problem in the Book of Numbers. Its title conveyed one of the central challenges in our own lives. The title of this rom com is Jane Austen Wrecked My Life . Jane Austen wrecked my life . Let’s dwell on that....