Mifrasim מפרשים : Navigating our Lives as Role Models, Educators, Parents and Jews

Shabbat Zachor 2017-Doubt that Freezes and Doubt that Frees This year, sadly, there is no shortage of thoughts that come to mind when I think of Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat where we remember our enemy, Amalek.  In a world of increasing hate crimes and finger pointing, the importance of calling out evil is very much alive..   Yet, for some reason, it is a gematria related to the word Amalek that has me thinking most.  The numerical of the word עמלק which is 240, is the same numerical value as the word ספק, the word for doubt.  It is doubt that we must obliterate this Shabbat.   R. Steinsaltz, writes in his book   Change and Renewal, that just like the physical enemy of Amalek that threatened the existence of our people, doubt threatens us individually in a different way.  “Amalek seeks to encourage and perpetuate doubt and thus attempts to halt any effort to deal with doubt and resolve it.”  In this way, the evil is the existence of “permanen...

Approaching the Bar and Moving it as We Go It was the season of the High Holidays a few years ago.  After many days of reciting slichot, the special prayers for forgiveness, someone turned to me and paraphrased the famous line from “Love Story” and asked, “I know love is not never having to say I’m sorry, but do I always have to say I’m sorry?”   The truth is that, even months and months after the High Holidays, we Jews are in a perpetual state of asking for forgiveness and working toward repentance.  Three times daily, we praise God for being open to our change by reciting the bracha of הרוצה בתשובה  and three times daily, we ask for forgiveness when we say סלח לנו .   How is it that 6 times a day, we cannot get it right?  How can it be that behaving the way we should is so elusive that we have to mention it so often throughout the day?   The first and most common answer is that no matter how hard we try, we will never hit the standard we wan...

Making our Private School Bubbles Broader Public Squares I have often heard from teachers, students and parents that Jewish Day School is a “bubble.”  On the one hand, this term is used affectionately in that the bubble is a safe, warm space, with shared values and a shared outlook--a space where we gain strength as a school community.   But the bubble is also seen by many as dangerous.  It can be a place that perpetuates insularity and can lead to narrow and skewed views.  So much so that students often talk about becoming free and leaving the bubble. And certainly we need to move beyond our bubbles, or, as some have called them, our silos.  We need to understand that “it’s important to resist the temptation to surround ourselves almost exclusively with like-minded people, those who reinforce our pre-existing views and biases.”(Commentary, “Living in Ideological Silos”)   The place where we need to go is into more public spaces.  Places where,...

Each and every year, we read the story of Yosef during the time of Chanukkah.  And while lessons of Chanukkah and Yosef can complement one another, this year, I cannot stop thinking about Yaakov and Chanukkah.   Of course, Chanukkah celebrates the rededication our permanent home the חנוכת המזבח.  But, as we know, there are other ways that over the centuries we have explained the meaning of the name of this chag.  One way is that the name is broken up into two words, חנו כה -- they rested on the 25th.  After a long struggle with the Syrian Greeks, who challenged their religious and political identity, , the Macabees rested on the 25th of Kislev.   They rested in order to take time to celebrate their victory and their momentum -- the beginnings of a new chapter of their political life, of the world order they envisioned was about to begin.. And just like the Macabees, Yaakov, also sits  וישב יעקב .  After long personal struggles,with Esav, wit...

Yesterday, I had the chance to learn with my friends at the Riverdale Senior Center, Kinneret Day School’s across the hall neighbors.  I came there wanting to get insight from the wiser generation about thank you notes.  Why is it that some people, and often older people, get so upset and even insulted when they do not receive a thank you note?  I have often seen people get emotional when they do not receive something in the mail, and wanted my new friends to help me understand why.  We bounced around a few possibilities: 1-Educational-”Kids have got to learn to say thank you.”  As parents and educators, we all know that we are trying to raise appreciative people.  When someone receives, they must thank.  It is basic human decency to show appreciation and the thank you note is a clear indicator of this הכרת הטוב  hakarat ha tov, recognizing the good.  2-Functional-One of our participants told me that his mother used to call the thank yo...

As a theater dad, I have spent many Sundays at shows over the life of my children.  And while there were many shows that were familiar, the one that was least familiar, but most enjoyable was Urinetown. This hilarious social commentary about politics, power and life is one of the funniest shows I have ever seen.   One of the greatest exchanges is after someone takes a glass of water and then she is told that “The glass of water's inside you,....because we are all rivers.”  The ensemble then goes on sing operatically and sarcastically that we are all rivers. ‘You are the river, I am the river He is the river, she is too.”  (To listen to this song, click   here ) This song always made me laugh, but over the past few months, I have been thinking a lot about rivers. And maybe rivers are really inside of us. Way back in the summer, was our first allusion to a river.  We mourned the destruction of the Bet HaMikdash we sang about rivers. (Psalms 137:1) א ...

You Have to “Got Time for the Pain” Mine is almost 12 years old.  It’s a white, cloth bag that I got on a college reunion weekend in Ann Arbor.  It’s my shul bag.  And if you ask my kids, they could identify it in an instant.  Over the years, it has carried talises, candies, tissues, and books from   On Repentance  to  Hop on Pop .  Truth is, what we carry in our bags, tells a lot about us as we move through the years of our lives.  - As we pack our metaphorical bags, especially the ones we take with us on the Yamim Noraim, we pack lots of emotions as well.  We enter this time of year with fear, awe, hopes, dreams, regret and joy. But there is one emotion that most of us do not associate easily with this time of the year - - the emotion of pain.  Andrew Solomon in his book Noonday Demon , quotes a Russian expression that says, “If you wake up feeling no pain, you know you are dead.”   This quote makes me think a lot...