Excruciatingly difficult That’s what I’d call it Just walking into a room today Excruciatingly difficult That’s how it felt… (What a ridiculous thing to say!) All I had to do To get in And out And make it through Was to Drive the car Pass the time Park the car Inside the lines Get out …
A poem written on a Jetblue flight carrying me home from my father's funeral. Flying as a metaphor...
Spoken word poetry about a rabbi who now has to be the one who sits shiva and let's other take care of him.
A mantra that I repeated again and again when I couldn't wrap my head around the fact that my father had in fact died.
A spoken word poem about a rabbi who realizes that after all the pastoral support for people whose loved ones have died, he never really knew what it felt like. Until his own father died.
I always wondered how my Dad gained all that wisdom and I wondered if I would ever gain that depth of wisdom to be able to help my children when they needed to navigate their lives.
Imagine having to make this decision: to fly home to hold your wife’s hand as she buries her mom on the West Coast or to remain on the East Coast to oversee the diagnosis and care of your mother who just had a major stroke. What would you do?
Be a Mensch, that's what Or Ami's innovative parenting and pre-K to 6th grade learning program is all about. Mensch-ify my Kid, Mensch-ify my Home, Mensch-ify my Playground.
How might synagogues and Jewish communities respond to the needs of teens to express their inner turmoil and to learn new techniques for managing stress and emotional exhaustion?
Rabbinic Student Elana Nemintoff reflects on the role of the rabbi during the immediate responses by Congregation Or Ami, Calabasas, to the Woolsey fire.
How does a Rabbi deal with the trauma of a fire and some shootings? Here's another peek into the journey.
When the fires hit in southern california, we took 10 Community-Restoring Actions that helped our congregants, community and ourselves.
Facing the trauma after the fires. If it can happen to the rabbi, it can happen to you too...
When circumstances out of our control - like fires or other disasters - affect our ability to hold our Thanksgiving rituals in our usual way, we can become distraught. When life intervenes – like fires destroying homes or forcing a loved one to be absent – what happens to the ritual? By Sally Weber MSW and Rabbi Paul Kipnes