On these darkest of days of the year our ancestors around the world sought to push away the gloom with holidays of light. This year it seems we need to…
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Why I love City Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism I love City Congregation because I am surrounded by a community of people who share my values. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself that is the entire Torah’. I…
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Many years ago I wrote a poem that begins: "I sing when the day comes / For at night there is only anguish.” This poem comes to mind this year…
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After the high of the High Holidays and the earnest resolutions I made, everything I write seems somehow ordinary or mundane. This year, I am going to try to let…
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Yesterday something changed for me. Until yesterday I believed that my days of stopping traffic, of getting arrested, of civil disobedience were over, at least until my beautiful children were…
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Today, when the words from Washington are so dark, I am trying to focus on Martin Luther King's dream at the Lincoln memorial: "We refuse to believe that the bank…
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The period of 49 days between the holidays of Passover and Pentecost (Pesach and Shavuot) which we find ourselves in is very special to me, since it is when I…
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Where am I from? As perennial immigrants, Jews have been asking themselves this question from time immemorial. For many scions of families who survived the Holocaust (as mine did), this…
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The Passover Haggadah offers the traditional Exodus origin story basing itself on a rabbinic understanding of the Hebrew Bible. One of the most powerful sayings in the Rabbinic compilations of…
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The Jewish calendar generally associates spring with the holiday of Passover, but since the calendar fluctuates with the tides of the moon, this year the beginning of spring coincides with…
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