After the recent loss of his mother, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch reflects on life’s ephemeral beauty – and the central importance of mothers in our lives.
With all our differences, what makes us one Jewish people? Rabbi Rena Rifkin has always believed that what connects us “is the core belief and understanding that we must protect one another and care for others.” That’s why she’s so troubled by Jewish individuals who are claiming religious exemptions from vaccinations amid a serious outbreak of measles.
After a shooting attack on a California synagogue and an anti-Semitic cartoon published in The New York Times left American Jews reeling, Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch addressed anti-Semitism coming from both the right and left: “Jews do something that no others do: We manage to unite the extreme right and the extreme left.”
On Friday after Memorial Day and a recent personal loss, Rabbi Samantha Natov recalled the story of Yodea, the Angel of Losses, who spends all of his time digging for what we lose in our lives. “He reminds us that we’re all still in a relationship with a loved one who is no longer with us. As we search, with the light of our souls, we find strands left behind — and bind up their memories so they may live on through us.”
“In every generation, every Jew should feel as if they were personally redeemed from Egypt,” Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch quotes from the Haggadah. “The Haftarah reading for the second day of Passover mentions Natan-Melech once, in passing. But this very week, Israeli archeologists announced that they discovered an ancient, 2,641-year-old seal impression bearing his name. Because Jerusalem is slowly revealing its buried secrets, we can trace our very essence to the source. We would not be here if they had not been there. Today, we are the beating heart of Judaism.”
In this week’s parasha, the sons of Aaron, Avihu and Nadav, are killed without warning after making an offering of fire to God. “It has puzzled scholars for millennia,” says Rabbi Samantha Natov. “But maybe this story is supposed to function similarly to a modern horror film and allow us to ponder the transience of life and possibility of arbitrary violence from a safe distance.”
