An Instant In An Eternity

This is by no means a new topic. Technology is here to stay, well, here to advance and develop and take us along for the ride. We're not likely to get off this magical mystery tour any time soon, so best just get with the program, right? I'm not sure that works for me. If you know me, you know I do not have a smartphone. If you don't know me, you're probably about ready to close this webpage because, "what on earth? No smartphone?" One reason has to do with money - yeah, likely I'm on the cheap side here, but also because I'm not sure it's worth the money. It's a treadmill I'm not looking to get on because the only thing one loses is money each time around. It's also because I think they are damaging to us, to relationships, to the personal connectedness that we all need. Information is too readily available to us that we have to know it all and now. We have lost our sense of patience and adventure – who knows how to read a map anym...

Rosh Hashanah provides us a time to keep thinking, considering, pondering the world around us, our families, our communities. It is a start, not an end. One of the starts we have comes as we turn to the beginning of reading the Torah (Old Testament) in just a few weeks. The stories, morals, and guidance offered in this text are intense, complex, and insightful parables to help us evaluate and consider our lives and our relationships with others. I heard the following observation recently and have been contemplating it further. Abraham was forced into two difficult situations with the women who were the mothers of his children. First, Abraham was forced to send his first son, Ishmael, away into the wilderness. Sending away his son severed his relationship completely with Ishmael and Hagar. Second, Abraham was instructed to sacrifice his second son, Isaac. He almost completed the act and killed his son, as he felt he was instructed by G-d. There is much ambiguity in the text abou...

We've made it, almost, to the end of Elul and Rosh Hashanah. This came up recently in my Facebook feed. It's really wonderful. It's warm and lovely. It comes from the 92nd Street Y in NYC and a whole host of Reform communities and leaders. The message is just fantastic. Obviously I don't have enough superlative words for it. And it starts and ends with the amazing Angela Warnick, my old babysitter and friend! I was transported back to my post " That grey area " from a few weeks ago. This is the kind of beautiful messaging we get coming out of the grey area of Judaism. And I'm struck by how little of this we get from the black and white. I don't get it, I just don't. There's nothing offensive in the message - a new year, a sweet year, a year of hope, a year of goodness for all. But yet, it's not the kind of message coming from Aish HaTorah or Chabad or any of the yeshivot or midrashot educating the current generation of young Orthod...