Parashat Ha Shavua Commentaries

How life teaches us! We read books and attend lectures and we think we are ready for what life brings. Armed with our learning, we venture into the world only to discover that the formulas of the brain do not help bind the wounds of the heart. Read more...

At the height of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s, the average American worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week just to earn a basic living. People of all ages- children and adults and especially the poor and recent immigrants - labored in factories, mills, and mines earning small wages and working in what were often unsafe working conditions, with no fresh air, bathroom facilities or breaks. Labor activists demonstrated, advocated, and battled for better conditions, including days off for workers. Read more...

The Jewish Calendar does not change, we do. As we observe Tisha B’av with fasting and lamentations this Thursday, I am flooded with the memories of other places that I have been when this summer sacred fast day occurred, memories of Camp where, as the lone summer sacred day – we cannot say holiday – the whole camp was Tisha B’av. Read more...

The fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz, this year falling on July 9, 2020, is one of four fasts connected to the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E. Read more...

It’s the repeated theme of the musical “Hamilton”: Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? As Lin Manuel Miranda writes in his notes to the libretto of the show (in “Hamilton, the Revolution” which Miranda wrote with Jeremy McCarter), “Once I wrote this passage, I knew it would be the key to the whole musical... It’s the fundamental truth all our characters (and all of us) share.” Read more...