Category: Year
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Shoftim 5783: “Community Standards”
About eighteen months ago a small boutique bakery opened steps away from the shul where I worked at the time. I thought it would be a perfect win-win opportunity if the bakery would agree to kosher…
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Eikev 5773: “Underfoot Mitzvot”
If you were approached without warning and asked to name “the most important mitzvah” what would you answer? This morning I want to suggest that the most important mitzvah is the one you do not yet…
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Va’Etchanan 5783: “That is Your Wisdom and Understanding”
This week was my first “holiday” week at Ohev Sholom. Because the “holiday” in question was Tisha b’Av, I didn’t have to worry about cooking a big holiday meal, but preparing for Tisha b’Av was stll…
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Matot-Ma’asei 5783: “Finding Equilibrium”
One of the techniques used by television writers to build excitement as a TV series reaches its grand finale is to bring back characters from earlier episodes for cameo appearances in the final episode. This resolves…
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Hukkat-Balak 5783: “Transitions”
One of my favorite rabbinic jokes is particularly appropriate for a Shabbat such as this one. I first shared it publicly ten years ago, I shared it again a few weeks ago, and I’m going to…
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Baha’alotcha 5783: “Crisis & Insight”
While packing up our apartment last week I found these handwritten notes which are my father’s notes from the speech he delivered at my bar mitzvah. I don’t remember much of the speech itself because, as…
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Emor 5783: “Crimes & Context”
On April 15th, 1936, a group of Palestinian insurgents loyal to Izz Ad-Din al-Qassam, shot and killed two Jewish motorists on the road between Nablus and Tulkaram. Days later two Palestinian laborers were shot and killed…
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Bo 5783: “Negotiating In Good Faith & Bad”
There are two great movie versions of the story of Yetziat Mitzraim, the exodus from Egypt: Steven Spielberg’s Prince of Egypt and Cecille B. Demille’s The Ten Commandments. Both draw heavily from midrashim to flesh out…
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Vaera 5783: “And I Appeared to Them”
As you know I live in Chicago but, thanks to the Internet, I sometimes listen to the radio in New York. Over the past two weeks, I have been listening to an “oral history call-in” that…
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Miketz 5783: “Between Persecution and Salvation”
I’ve told you before about the Christian family we met when we lived in Jerusalem fifteen years ago. They practiced a very austere form of Protestant Christianity which attempted to purify Christianity from what they saw…
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 