Posts by Cyril

Imagine, if you will, what life would be like without images. We have images for everything. We imagine what our children will be like when they grow up. We imagine what their Bar and Bat Mitzvahs will be like in a few years. We try to see ourselves in different situations before making any kind…

If you were to think of the worst day of your life, what would it be?  There are so many different answers and so many different possible ways of having a terrible experience that the constellation of tzoris is as wide as the world is broad.  In fact, the well of pain seem endless.  I think the…

Unless you follow the Nobel Prize, you may not have heard of Mairead Corrigan.  She was a shorthand typist and secretary in Belfast, Northern Ireland. But she wasn’t typing on the afternoon of August 10, 1976. Instead, she and her sister and her three children, hopped on bicycles and went for an outing. That same…

There is a very funny e-mail that floats around that almost every rabbi must get at one time or another. It is a small collection of children’s answers to questions that are posed in religious school. For instance, one said that Noah’s wife was “Joan of Arc.” When asked about the fifth commandment, another one…

I am a coffee fanatic. I am also a Judaism fanatic. So imagine my joy when I was able to tie in a coffee story to Jewish story. What am I talking about? Let me explain. The word on the street is that Starbucks will soon begin selling instant coffee, called Via, in stores for…

As you know, it is almost Springtime and Springtime always means planting and  gardening and getting down and dirty in the soil and pray that what grows out  of the ground somewhat resembles the seeds you put into the ground! Now, as I  was getting ready for planting this season and planning out my garden,…

The profoundly horrific events of Pittsburgh at the Tree of Life synagogue this past Shabbat has given us all pause to consider what it means to be Jewish in America.  There are the statistics that show quite clearly how contemporary American society finds it all too easy to attack Jews.  It reminds me of something…

When I was a young rabbinic student and had just come back from my first year in Israel, I arrived in Cincinnati for a crash course in leading High Holiday services.  I wasn’t worried about my Hebrew.  That was fine.  I was worried about writing sermons, something I had never done before and was worried…

You probably all know the joke about the young man who came home from school one day and said to his mother, “Mom, I want to become a rabbi!” At which point his mother says, “That’s nice dear. But let me ask you a question: What kind of job is that for a nice Jewish…