eShalom Archive

curated by Rabbi Phil Cohen plus The Meaning of Hanukkah! Videos: Mayim Bialik on Hanukkah.  Informative and funny. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYeg7QbGR7E Shmelf the Hanukkah Elf.  A Santa’s elf learns about Hanukkah. Perhaps a bit of a stretch, as Santa has a role, but it’s nice, a bit funny, and written in the style of Dr. Seuss. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HIQzZC1ejA […]

This week our patriarch Jacob wrestles with an angel. Or is it a person? Or is it God? Or is it his own insecure self?  The biblical text is purposely vague on this. But one thing is certain: It’s a momentous moment. A man returning home after many years, about to meet his brother Esau, from […]

Serving a new community in the time of a pandemic is surely no day at the beach. Still, I feel we’ve developed a good relationship, one that will deepen over time.  I look forward to continuing to work with you on our many sacred tasks. HanukkahPalooza One reason I’m happy to be a part of this […]

Friends, Next week is Thanksgiving, and it’s going to be a Thanksgiving unlike any Thanksgiving in our lives. In my family, we do our best to gather on the fourth Thursday of November. Distance and my rabbinic responsibilities often prevent us from gathering as a family for the High Holy Days or Pesach. So, for the […]

By last Monday evening I realized I’d been involved in an interesting series of CBS events that began Thursday night. Thursday evening was the Zoom CBS board meeting; Friday our Zoom Kabbalat Shabbat service; Saturday morning, was our bi-weekly Torah study; Sunday morning was Sunday school; later in the afternoon I was part of a […]

I don’t know if we’ll have a president when this piece appears, though I can say with confidence that our fingernails are all considerably closer to the skin than they were a few days ago. So I thought momentarily to remove ourselves from the fate of our nation and take us back in time and […]

In this week’s Torah portion, Lech Lecha, God commands Abraham and Sarah to leave their home and go to the place “which I shall show you (Genesis 12:1).”  I will make you a blessing, God says.  I’ll make your name great. Kind of vague but certainly promising. This command and promise means that this elderly couple are […]

We have entered the Hebrew month of Heshvan.  Having emerged from the months of Elul and Tishrei, days filled with preparation for and observance of all of those seemingly innumerable High Holy days, Heshvan seems like a respite from a super-abundance of observance the celebration.  So, I asked my rabbi, Rabbi Google, what’s important about Heshvan?  Instantaneously, the […]

I was speaking with a friend of mine, a rabbi out in Santa Monica, doing a wrap up of our experiences of the High Holidays, when we fell upon the subject of midrash. You may know midrash as a relatively small but important body of literature from around the sixth century into the Middle Ages, […]