This year, many children, my own included, will be reading The Diary of Anne Frank – seventy years since her first diary entry in 1942, sixty years since the diary first appeared in English.
September 16, 2012
Hineni
Occasion(s) / Rosh Hashanah
Six long years the two of them worked closely together. She, the daughter of one of Baltimore’s great rabbis; he, the up-and-coming crown prince of Solomon Schechter’s recast faculty at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
September 15, 2012
The Keter
Occasion(s) / Rosh Hashanah
Secured in the lower level of the famed Shrine of the Book at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum sits the Aleppo Codex. You may have read about it this summer in the paper, and there is a new book about it by the journalist Matti Friedman.
September 14, 2012
1938 vs. 2012
Occasion(s) / Nitzavim
It is tempting, I know, to draw parallels between 1938 and 2012. My inbox is filled with emails about appeasement, about Neville Chamberlain’s haunting 1938 proclamation of having secured peace in our time.
September 07, 2012
The Form is the Message
Occasion(s) / Ki Tavo
Last week, the Cosgrove family took its annual road trip – this year from Ohio to Indiana to Michigan to New York, through central Pennsylvania. It was a great trip.
June 15, 2012
Acting Now For Ever
Occasion(s) / Sh’lah L’kha
Not too long ago, a friend of mine shared with me the difference between a psychotic and a neurotic. A psychotic, he explained, believes that 2+2 = 5. A neurotic, on the other hand, knows that 2+2 = 4, but he worries about it all the time.
June 08, 2012
My Birthright Experience
Occasion(s) / B’ha·alot’kha
This morning, I want to talk to you about a program called Birthright Israel – a ten-day free trip to Israel for young Jews between the ages 18 and 26.
June 01, 2012
Dialogue Between the Generations
Occasion(s) / Naso
As I begin my fifth year at Park Avenue Synagogue, I have had many opportunities to reflect on what it means to stand on the cusp of a generational shift in American Jewry.
May 18, 2012
Liberty and Its Limits
Occasion(s) / B’hukkotai
From the Garden of Eden and onward, humanity has been confronted with the delicate balance of personal freedom and its limitations.
May 11, 2012
The Caves of Our Lives
Occasion(s) / Emor
This past Thursday, on Lag BaOmer, 33rd day of the counting of the Omer, tens of thousands of Jewish pilgrims gathered in the northern Israeli town of Meron for a memorial celebration , a Yom Hilula, at the grave of the mystic sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.