eShalom Archive

Our Hesed Committee needs a chairperson Synagogues like to claim that they are a family, meant in the best sense of the word, of course.  We take care of each other.  We help each other through thick and thin. And to a very large extent, my experience at CBS as I come to the end of my […]

Robert Wistrich famously called it “the longest hatred,” and it does not disappear.  Antisemitism has seen a resurgence in America and around the world.  In this country, people have been killed for being Jewish. Buildings and cemeteries have been vandalized with antisemitic graffiti.  People are being assaulted, a disproportionate number of them being Orthodox.  A friend who generally wears a kippah […]

I was shlepping my valise up to my place after visiting my daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter (about whom I kvell endlessly, as is a Zayde’s right) in Bloomington (a six hour shlep – again with the shlep?? – if you can do it with minimum of stops).  So coming home from this visit to my mishpocheh, […]

Let’s Start Streaming The next iteration of my Monday night Seminarion begins next week.  I’m calling it Gently Down the Streams. Over the next several weeks, we’ll look at each major stream in Jewish life and try to get behind what they stand for.  I think there will be bits in the course that will surprise you. Did you know, for instance, that […]

Seven weeks after Pesach begins, we encounter the festival of Shavuot.  Pesach, as we repeated more than a few times at the seder, is the celebration of our liberation from slavery.  With an outstretched hand and a mighty arm God, with the assistance of Moses, brought us out of slavery into freedom.  But freedom from slavery is not […]

As we begin the Maggid portion of the seder, the time when we tell the story, the leader lifts up the three matzot that have been set aside and recites, “This is the bread of affliction which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.”  And as the reading continues, the leader says, “This year we […]

Why IS this night different from all other nights? Four more questions: 1.     The wicked child.  Much has been made of the wicked one, the one who says, “What’s all this stuff to you guys?”  By saying “to you” he or she’s apparently excluding him or herself from the census of the Jewish people.  Is that really true, or, […]