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Every week, our Wilshire Boulevard Temple clergy share their Shabbat message. In about five minutes or less, they offer personal perspectives on such topics as Jewish holidays, the weekly Torah portion, liturgy, customs and traditions, and sometimes current events through the lens of Jewish learning and understanding.
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My Shabbat message was going to focus on Mother’s Day. I wanted to explore the tragic tale of the holiday’s founder, Anna M. Jarvis, and the lessons we can learn from her story. I wanted to discuss the central Jewish value of honoring parents and our ancestral mothers’ influence on the Jewish concept of ‘home’. But then the news started coming out of Israel about airstrikes and air raid sirens, and my thoughts and energy turned to the mothers and families who have huddled in...
This week gives us a double dose of Torah portions as we read Acharei-Mot and Kedoshim. If we read the titles in a certain way it poses a probing question. Acharei-Mot? Kedoshim? “After death? Are we holy?” or “How can we know that when our lives are over, where we are after death that holiness remains?” As we read a little further, the Torah’s answer becomes clear. Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's T...
"My technologically challenged mother got a new iPhone this week and I was her first call. 'What should I do with my old one?' she asked, which got me thinking, said Rabbi Beau Shapiro. When something’s obsolete, when we’ve lost our use for it—we discard it and rarely give it another thought. We read in the Torah this shabbat that after the construction of the mishkan, the portable sanctuary our ancestors built in the desert was completed, Moses “took the tablets and placed them in the A...
Rabbi Elissa Ben-Naim considers a particularly troubling week and the wisdom and perspective she gained from her Grade 6 students.Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history. Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard TempleWebsite: wbtla.orgYoutube: Wilshire Boulevard TempleInstagram: wilshireboulevardtemple
The first time I really heard about the suffering of Persian Jews -- not just in snippets, but in detail - was last week. This past Sunday, I cohosted an event with Sinai Temple to hear Dora Levy Mossanen, a Persian Jewish author, talk about her latest book, which took place in the Jewish Quarter of Teheran in the 1940’s.Fifty women gathered in the beautiful home our Persian Jewish hostess – half from Wilshire Boulevard Temple and half from Sinai to learn about the lives and treatment o...
Dichotomy. The portion this week is called “and he lived”; yet, this portion is the long scene of how Jacob dies completely lucid, with intention, and surrounded by his family. Perhaps there is no dichotomy really at all- the way that we see Jacob die is how he sets up his legacy with intention and the loving care of a parent who has seen and experienced the fullest range of life’s trials and tribulations. Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of ...
It’s all about the Light. As a kid growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, winters were severe and seemingly endless. Serial snowstorms, single digit temperatures above and below zero. November through March and often most of April were dreary, dark, and depressing. The worst of it all I realize now, wasn’t the daily challenges brought by winter weather: shoveling the driveway from apron to garage (120 feet. I know because half of that driveway served as a pitching mound during the summer m...
This is the real miracle of Chanukah. It’s not about the mythic story that a small bit of oil lasted for eight days. The miracle of Chanukah is the immutable, unbreakable, Jewish spirit that always finds a way, not to simply survive, but to thrive, and to bring a little light into even the darkest of places.Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history. Facebook: Wi...
There is no way to ignore the violence we’ve witnessed this past week in the United States and in Israel. It’s all terrible and tragic. But amidst all of it, I’ve also had meaningful conversations with people who have reconnected to our Jewish tradition, some of whom decided to join our tribe through conversion, and those who are beginning to explore the possibility of joining our Jewish family. They all shared beautiful sentiments about the elements of our tradition that up...
Veterans Day 2022Today, November 11th, we honor our Veterans. We might wear patriotic clothes, some sing military anthems, perhaps we even fly the flag of the United States of America. We pay tribute to the great sacrifice these brave men and women made, and continue to make for our country, for our freedoms, and for our democracy – each and every day. But when the parades are over and the flag has been carefully folded, we might recognize our veterans, but do we really see them?Each week, a ...
"Now is the time in our lives in our time to use speech to make a difference, to make a change," writes Rabbi Elissa Ben-Naim. Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history. Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard TempleWebsite: wbtla.orgYoutube: Wilshire Boulevard TempleInstagram: wilshireboulevardtemple
Rabbi Jonah of Gerona said, "One must ask oneself, "What have I done? What have I become?" This past week, we entered into the month of Elul, the last month of the Jewish year before Rosh Hashanah, and what I would call the gateway into a powerful Jewish spiritual dimension.Though there are no holidays during Elul, every day is a holy day during which we have an opportunity to review our life choices during the past year, reflect on how we behaved, how we treated others, and honestly ass...
The Rabbis of the Talmudic era ask us to look at these tragedies as not only external forces seeking to destroy us (clearly we as a Jewish community have plenty) but to also look internally and examine the actions of the community. As we enter this commemorative and mournful period of Tish B’av, we are compelled to not only look at the historical moments of baseless hatred but look within at our present moment in time and recognize the sin of such hatred still lurks in our community.&nb...
A little over a week ago, my brother Arthur, his two sons and daughters-in-law, and his six grandchildren all went to the Highland Park Fourth of July Parade. And the dream turned into a nightmare. A nightmare that has been experienced by countless other communities in our country. A nightmare that suddenly felt very up close and personal.Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holid...
Cantor Kerith Spencer-Shapiro asks, "Have you ever been so angry and frustrated that you lashed out and struck an inanimate object?" This experience is something that most of us can connect with, even though we may feel uncomfortable recalling a time when we did so. This week’s portion contains such a moment, where Moses, our most revered teacher, becomes exasperated and infuriated with the Israelite people. In the wilderness, God tells Moses to speak to a rock and that water will pour forth....
This week’s Torah portion, Korach, arrives as what seems to be an intervention from the Most High. It serves as a brutally disturbing reminder of the devastation wrought by the corrupt human lust for power. God knows we weren’t in need of it, for we are living witnesses to its catastrophic casualties. Korach and his co-conspirators, Datan and Aviram, plan and execute a rebellion against Moses and Aaron, God’s chosen leaders. Moses is deeply perplexed by their act of sedition and insists ...
In this week's Shabbat message, Rabbi Nanus talks about this week's torah portion, Parshat Shelach L’cha, and it's teaching that to give up and refuse to move forward condemns us to a barren life of unfulfillment – a life in a desert. When we are so afraid of change or taking a step into new territory, we become paralyzed, condemned to repeat the same self-defeating patterns. We have to be willing to take a leap of faith, to embrace change, and be brave enough to enter a future that offers us...
The Confirmation ritual was created to be celebrated alongside the holiday of Shavuot - the moment in time when we recognize the gift of Torah. In Jewish theological parlance, we speak about the giving of Torah using the word “revelation”. I love this word in the context of the Confirmation service. It is a joyful experience to think about our kids as having stood alongside us, our ancestors, and all the Jews who have yet to be born, as the Torah was revealed to them at the foot of Mt. Sinai....
"This year, my family and I are experiencing the “Ultimate Omer,” as we eagerly anticipate the days until (God-willing) the arrival of a new baby," says Cantor Lisa Peicott as she begins this week's Shabbat message and shares her personal insights into the counting of days. Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history. Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard TempleWebsit...
This Shabbat arrives holding an impossible truth in its wings of peace: the two most transformative events in modern Jewish history: the Holocaust and the establishment of the modern State of Israel. This past week we made, as we must, the annual descent into the darkness of the hell of Jewish hatred and annihilation. Not doing so is a dangerous form of denial. This coming week we will make the annual ascent to the top of Mt. Scopus, in celebration of Yom Ha’atzma’ut, the establishment of Isr...
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