“What if?” I asked myself as the pandemic began to impact all of our lives on a profound level. “What if I or the people I know and love get sick? What if we have to enter the hospital alone?” With the creation of the first human being in the Garden of Eden, God said, […]

I do not sew. Sewing and cooking – some of the traditional aspects of being a homemaker – are not my forte. I am envious of those who do it well. I love filling our home with love, yet sometimes I wish I knew how to fill it with good food or with the quick […]

In preparing for Passover it is so easy to get lost in the logistics – the guest list and the table settings, the matzah and the menu. The seder is such an elaborate meal. The Shabbat before Pesach calls us to plan ahead with intention. This coming Shabbat has a special name – it is […]

August 5th marked twenty years since I arrived in Charlotte. By sheer coincidence, I spent my twentieth anniversary of becoming a Southerner immersed in a Hebrew Union College intensive graduate course on Southern Jewry. I spent the week learning from scholars in Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Savannah about the critical role Southern Jews played in the […]

It was the final day of a two-week journey to explore the Holocaust, a trip filled with long days of study, long drives, and long hours in concentration camps and death camps. I was with fifteen other Holocaust educators learning about Holocaust history, about best practices in Holocaust education, and about personal and collective responsibility […]

This past Shabbat was a wakeup call. On one hand, it was a wakeup call to the painful world we have created for our kids through our indifference. Our kids have grown up in a post-Columbine world where mass-shootings have become common headlines and common realities. Whether we are longtime gun owners or whether even […]

When Jeremiah the prophet preached 2600 years ago, he enjoined his fellow Jews who were exiled to Babylon to get engaged with their community, “Seek the peace of the city to which I have caused you to be in exile…for in its shalom, you shall find shalom.” (Jeremiah 29:7) The word shalom is variously translated as […]

Gmar chatimah tovah – may you each be sealed for a good year. It is great to come home to Temple Beth El. You are my family. Yom Kippur is about return and Yizkor is about return. This hour is about giving us time and space to return to our cherished memories of those we […]

The conductor’s role is to know his community of musicians well: the ranges and skills of the voices in his choir and the qualities and potential of each instrument they play in his band. He needs to know the music and the space and most of all the listeners whom he hopes to transform. Cantor […]