Though I Walk Through the Valley

The funeral this morning is cancer, not COVID. The crowd is bigger than I’d like – probably around 35-40 people and they’re not spread out as much as they should be. The legal limit is 50. I wish it was 10. It’s uncomfortable to wish for additional hardships for the mourners but I feel especially […]

Yom Kippur 5782 This past year, in the lull between the 2nd and 3rd COVID waves, a request came through for a rabbi to go and sit with a woman who was dying. It had been almost a year since rabbis could safely visit with anyone, but the numbers were at an all-time low, and

This week’s portion, Vayechi, is the second portion in Genesis where the title is about the lives of biblical characters who, in fact, die within the telling of the narrative. Toward the beginning of Genesis we read Chayei Sarah, “The Life of Sarah”, which recounts her death; and here, in Vayechi, which means, “And he

Let me tell you what I wish I’d know when I was young and dreamed of glory. You have no control – who lives, who dies, who tells your story. – Hamilton My iphone, on random setting, played me this song on the way to the cemetery and I was already weeping – fighting for

The Bat Mitzvah sits next to me fingering her new gold bracelet It was her grandmothers, who she’s missing today more than usual, I’d imagine I watch her connecting to a lost loved one through a tangible item, left behind for her, and I find myself missing my grandfather not yet gone a year I

I have never not felt safe wrapped in my tallis in one of my many colored tallitot Like being wrapped in the very wings of God Tachat Kanfei haShechina What better armour could I need? I might have asked you yesterday. But today I know better Know that men can be murdered while at prayer

When I need to rail at God prayer is the last place I want to be. I know I’ll find my way back to God one way or another but right now I don’t have words of my own and the words of tradition feel empty, given that men died with those words on their

My Papa was a pretty unassuming guy. He was quiet and sweet and relatively humble. So I think he would have been pretty surprised to know that his Yahrtzeit would fall on Shabbat Chukat, and thus his death will be recalled each year along with those of Miriam and Aaron. This week, in the hazy

This day makes me sad. Friends mourn children who never came to be while others turn their children into monsters such that we celebrate their death sentences. How can I mourn for murderers while Jewish potential died on train tracks this week? The world is filled with those who hate (and those who love, surely)