I do not really have time to be writing this drash. As I sit at my computer this morning, there are many other things I could and should be doing – including packing. I will be spending this week in Maryland, teaching for my rabbinic colleagues at an annual educational retreat humorously know among us rabbi-types as “rabbi camp.” Nor is this unpacked, unprepared state of affairs an anomaly for me. I describe my personal organizational style as being a “triage-er” – everything is done eventually, but only when it becomes the most pressing emergency on my to-do list. Read more...

Before Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. took the stage in 1963 at the March on Washington to offer his prophetic, "I Have a Dream" speech, Rabbi Yoachim Prinz, the president of the American Jewish Congress, spoke about the danger of America becoming a "nation of onlookers," bystanders who remain silent in the face of segregation and inequality. The German-born Rabbi Prinz knew this experience all too well, having served as a rabbi in Germany before being arrested by the Gestapo several times. He was ultimately rescued by the sponsorship of Rabbi Stephen Wise to come to the US in 1937. Read more...

According to the "quotes" section of Goodreads.com, it was E. B. White who said, "Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process." So, like any joke, this one will be a dead frog once I try to explain it – but since it's rather "inside baseball," I suspect many readers won't understand it without an explanation: Rabbinical students in their final year of rabbinic training sometimes refer to themselves (or are referred to by others) as "erev rav." Read more...

The animals of the forest were all agitated. They each had to make a choice. It was a simple choice, but the consequences could mean life or death. They could talk of nothing else. It was all tied in to the looming confrontation between Ari, the mountain lion, and Dov, the bear. This conflict had been brewing for some time, ever since that day, three weeks earlier, when Ari had first come into the forest. Read more...

The plague of the firstborn disappeared while reading through the Torah portion earlier today. It was a weird thing - I know it's there; it has to be... it was in the Torah last year... You can't have 'The Ten Plagues' if there are only nine, can you? But why did my eyes keep glossing over it while running my fingers through the verses, failing to see what I was reading. What was I being asked to look at in the midst of my temporary blindness? Read more...