Judaism

By Rabbi Ben Kamin SAN DIEGO–Debbie Friedman, still a young woman, always a poet, died Sunday.  If she had earned a few dollars for all the times people have sung, hummed, chanted, or performed one of her hundreds of modern psalms without accreditation or royalties, she would have been a very wealthy woman. But instead

By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal SAN DIEGO — Many people find at least one aspect of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt unsettling: “The Israelites had done Moses’ bidding and borrowed from the Egyptians objects of silver and gold, and clothing. And the Lord had disposed the Egyptians favorably toward the people, and they let them have

By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal SAN DIEGO — When my daughter, Margalit, was young she had very simple tastes when it came to souvenirs: she liked rocks. When we walked into gift shops, she invariably gravitated to displays of brightly colored stones, geodes, and crystals. The more ornate, complex, or unusual the rock, the more she

By Rabbi Dow Marmur  JERUSALEM–Though Israel hasn’t (yet?) become the Jewish spiritual centre that some early Zionists envisaged, there’re currently many important efforts to build bridges between Jewish tradition and contemporary Jewry that might renew Judaism and reinvigorate the Jewish people everywhere. Some of it, alas, is ugly and dangerous, e.g., using biblical myths about the

By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal   SAN DIEGO–When I was attending the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, very little emphasis was placed on “practical rabbinics,” the nuts and bolts of being a rabbi. One piece of advice I do remember was aseh Toratcha keva, “fix a time for your Torah study.” We were warned that

 A Vow Fulfilled by Fran Laufer; Targum Press; 210 pages; $21.99. By Norman Manson SAN DIEGO–The most inspiring aspect of this memoir – in addition to its story of sheer survival – is the way Fran and Simon Laufer created a thriving, prosperous life for themselves and their family in the United States, at the same

By Rabbi Leonard Rosenthal SAN DIEGO — One of the most commented upon panels in the fused glass sculpture of the Twelve Tribes of Israel in the lobby of Tifereth Israel Synagogue is the one which portrays Dan. Dan is symbolized by a snake, which seems to be an unusual metaphor for the ancestors of