WORDS THAT BREATHE

Facing the trauma after the fires. If it can happen to the rabbi, it can happen to you too...

Four college buddies gather together for a guy's weekend reunion. Open hearted sharing ensues. A spoken word poem.

Reflections on holding a newborn baby

Devoted, history-holding, once-in-a-blue-moon-visiting friends are a transcendent gift from God.

Seeking to extract meaning from the shiva minyan, we held onto the stories that brightened that house of mourning.

Adin becomes a Bar Mitzvah by candlelight when the power went out. And the lessons learned were powerful.

Lessons learned while taking their last breaths. Reflections on bikkur cholim (visiting the sick) with David and Jerry. A Yom Kippur sermon.

Alzheimer's and dementia attacks the foundational values of who we are as Jews and Jewish families. We Jews consider ourselves the people of yikzor (remembrance): as long as we remember where we came from, we will have a sense of who we are and where we are going. So what happens when we can no longer remember any of that?

Our heartstrings resonated with story after story of those touched by mental illness, Alzheimer’s, homelessness, domestic violence, drugs, peer pressure, suicide, and the fear caused by terrorism. We discovered that alone we feel overwhelmed and powerless, but together we can become a source for change toward justice.

How does a parent survive the death of a child? Charlotte Klein, an 81-year-old wife, mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, reflects and offers wisdom.

Happy (belated) Father's Day! My day began like many others.  I woke up before everyone else, and read the paper on the internet. I watched with a chuckle as the kids woke, groggily gave me a kiss, turned on their computers, read on ESPN website that it was father's day, and then smiled sheepishly to wish me a happy one. Five great cards (one from each child; two from my wife) with heartfelt messages. I read on my new Kindle, the Father's Day present that - with my wife's per

So the Pope revoked the excommunication of a Holocaust-denying bishop. So the Jewish defense world was up in arms. Wall to wall criticism, as JTA's Telegraph blog puts it. It is easy to get worked up about this. Holocaust denial is one of those hot buttons that necessarily must evoke a response. But does the Pope's action require such a stern response? As the Telegraph reports, in On Holocaust-denying bishop, a voice of dissent , Rabbi Irwin Kula has produced a dissent

It made the Top Ten : Kibud Av v'Eim - Honor Your Father and Mother (coming in at #5, between the commandments about our relationship with God and spirituality, and those about how we treat other people). It made it into the Holiness Code : You shall revere your mother and father (appearing right after God tells Moses to tell us to be holy, kedoshim tehiyu ). The way we treat our parents tells us more about about the character of a person than the words he speaks or the gift