Providing for the poor is just as important as all the holiday prayers we offer! Ensuring that the poor not only have enough food to eat but are offered the dignity of gathering their own food is equivalent to all our pious rituals. These acts are even equal to building, and decorating, our sanctuaries.

We learn that even the most seemingly ridiculous question might lead to greater understanding.  If it serves as an entry to more learning, to a life of meaning then it is not demeaning of even the greatest of scholars. 

I wish for an Israel, and Jewish people, who are once again unafraid to take up challenging moral debates.  I can celebrate and I can question.  Call me naïve about the threats to our existence (and many most certainly will), call me disloyal (and some most certainly will) but I continue to believe that our very survival depends on living up to lofty moral standards.

In 1939 there were an estimated 15.3 million Jews living throughout the world.  Today, there are an estimated 15.8 million. Millions of Jews did not survive the Holocaust. I hold on to one name.

Grief follows a strange, and convoluted, path.  It defies reason.  It transcends expectation.  Although given how it accompanies my weekly ritual, I have come welcome it and the memories it summons.

At the very moment the children of Israel were walking through the waters, they sang.  Their singing took place as they were fleeing the Egyptians.  They sang to God even though they did not yet know if they would survive.  Their singing was not one of celebration but instead an act of profound faith.