Dear Friends, I have the privilege of sending you dispatches from our latest WJC tour of Israel. Our itinerary is substantially different from past trips, a conscious effort to provide our return travelers with new experiences and insights into Israeli life and history. To this end, we have spent the first four days of our […]
Author Archive | Rabbi Jonathan
For the Sin of Racism (Yom Kippur 5774)
The Vidui, the communal confession of sins that we chanted just a few moments ago, is actually an elaborate acrostic. The ancient litany makes its creative way through the entire Hebrew alphabet, enumerating all of the ways that we have missed the mark, from Aleph to Tav, the Hebrew A to Z. The opening lines […]
The Small Aleph (Rosh Hashanah 5774)
Over the years I have waxed rhapsodically about the countless layers of meaning and connection encoded into the Torah. Well, as I continue to study, it only keeps getting richer, and I am going to take you today on a little journey through our scribal tradition that carries a deep and important teaching for us […]
Hillel and Shammai (Rosh Hashanah 5774)
You may have heard stories about the ancient sages Hillel and Shammai. During the 1st Century B.C.E. Hillel and Shammai shared leadership of the Sanhedrin, the deliberative body and high court that determined all matters of Jewish practice and behavior. Hillel was a poor immigrant from Babylonia who came to the Land of Israel to […]
Pirkei d’Rabbi Jonathan
On Sunday, May 5 the Woodstock Jewish Congregation held a celebration in honor of my 25 years with the congregation. I wanted to offer a teaching, but I had too much to say! So I decided to boil down my teachings into aphorism, a la Pirkei Avot. Here they are: PIRKEI D’RABBI JONATHAN SAYINGS OF RABBI […]
Passover Reflections 2013
Dear Friends, At the Seder, after telling the story of Passover and singing “Dayenu”, we are instructed to lift our cup of liberation and recite what to me is the most important line in the Haggadah: “B’chol dor vador – In every generation we must view ourselves as personally traveling from oppression to liberation.” Whether […]
The Ten Utterances from Life Unfolding
After Moses and the Children of Israel escape from bondage, they are faced with a momentous challenge that forever shapes the worldview of Judaism. They must now create a society in which no Pharaoh might ever rise, a society in which every single human being is understood to be a child of God and therefore […]
Addressing the Family of a Suicide Victim
Dear Friends of the WJC, Our community experienced a tragic and untimely death this past week when Lee Wind, whose family have been members of our congregation for many years, took his own life. Rather than dance around the tragedy of suicide, I chose at the funeral to speak directly about the extraordinarily widespread incidence […]
Pete Seeger at the Woodstock Jewish Congregation
Dear Friends, Yes that’s right, that’s Pete Seeger on our bimah! On Sunday, May 20 we hosted a benefit concert for Kim and Reggie Harris and their dear friends and neighbors Terry Leonino and Greg Artzner, a.k.a. the musical duo Magpie. They are all still paying off the repairs that their adjacent properties in Schoharie […]
An Extraordinary Bar Mitzvah in Germany, and Impressions of Prague
Dear Friends, I am in the midst of a brief but deeply moving and fascinating trip to Germany and the Czech Republic, and I want to share some of my experiences and observations with you all. This post is fairly long, so please take your time, and I hope you find it worthwhile. The purpose of […]