Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection as we make our way toward Shabbat. I was struck this week by the overlap of the commemoration of two terribly sad moments in history: Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day and Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Both occurred this past Monday. Between 1915 to 1945, the Armenian and Jewish […]

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection as we move toward Shabbat. Counting is part of the Jewish way. Six days and then the seventh for Shabbat. Two candles. Ten commandments In the Jewish calendar now we are in a period of counting, the counting of the omer, sefirat haomer. The word, omer, refers to […]

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection as we move toward Shabbat. Mitzrayim means Egypt. Mitzrayim also means from a narrow place. The trajectory of the Passover experience is from the constricting place of slavery to the expansive experience of freedom. But it is not linear. Servitude takes many forms and so does liberty. We […]

  Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection as we move toward Shabbat and this week, Passover. We know all too well how slavery is not an ancient concept. As we gather around the Seder table and share a story of redemption, examples of servitude are not far from our consciousness. In our own country, […]