KADOSH BARUCH HU Open my lips, I whisper, closing my eyes to look for you. But all I see is the inside of my eyelids, screen of the 19 inch black and white television of my childhood, the knob stuck on a channel that doesn’t come in. And yet, I turn to you. Not turning really, but I back-float and you hover above me, I am staring out the window of the train at the seagulls and the passing mounds…
Consumer Review: Lifesmart Antiqua 5 Person Plug and Play Spa with 20 Jet You may be asking: Why would a rabbi review a hot tub? Well after dislocating a disc when I lifted a large rock in our front garden (yes, I, like the Biblical Moses, have issues with rocks) I got crazy about the idea about buying a hot tub. My wife got a nice little teaching award that came with a check and off we went in search…
By Rabbi Daniel Brenner A couple of years ago, I was sitting in a shivah minyan at the home of a friend who had just lost his father. My friend, a typical southern born Jew, had gone to a nominally Christian private school during the day and received a minimal Jewish education at his Reform Temple one afternoon a week. So when it came time for him to read the kaddish, he could recite the prayer pretty well, but had…
Faster, Rabbi! Drill! Drill! is the one-man-show I wrote and performed during my last year of rabbinical school – 1997. It was performed at the Goldman Theater of the 14th Street Y in New York City, Poet’s House of the University of Pennsylvania, and at a number of rabbinical conferences of CLAL. Prelude Right before I entered rabbinical school, I had a dream. I’m in a large suburban synagogue. The kind of synagogue with a gift shop which carries little…
The Rabbi of Pinsk and the Wise Wagon Driver The Rabbi of Pinsk was a man of moderate wealth, and he had enough money to hire a servant to drive his horse and buggy to Pichniev. The servant was a very poor man, who dressed only in rags, his feet wrapped with burlap because he had traded his shoes for food during a moment of destitution. He was hungry, and the rabbi noticed that he had nothing to eat for…
Author’s note: Top Ten Jewish Folktales is a writing project that I’ve been working on to retell my favorite classic Jewish folktales.Enjoy! The Holy Ark One Shabbat, Rabbi Levi saw a poor and hungry man weeping in the back row of the synagogue. That afternoon, the Rabbi had lunch with a very rich man. They drank, and then the rich man said: “Rabbi, I have to be honest. I buy many things but I use them and am not satisfied….
Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner April 25, 2012 Twenty-two years ago, as a bright-eyed college graduate, I was deciding between studying in a Yeshiva around the corner from my cousins’ house in Crown Heights or going to Suburban Philadelphia, where I knew absolutely no one, but I could study with Art Green at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. I wish that I could say that I wanted to study with Art because of his scholarship in chassdiut. Or that I was enamored…
By Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner At a conference on a ridiculously sunny spring day at NYU I met a Jewish guy in his thirties planning on getting hitched this summer. When he heard that I was the director of a project focused on the lives of boys and men in the Jewish community, he expressed his frustration that he could not find anything out there on men and pre-nuptial mikvah. I remember having the same experience – Eighteen years ago,…
“The most surprising aspect of “What We Brought Back: Jewish Life After Birthright,” a collection of essays, poems and images by more than 24 Birthright travelers to Israel, is just how varied and deep the authors delve. You’d be forgiven for assuming this anthology would trumpet the horn of the Taglit-Birthright program, much like the standard mission trip to Israel; this would be a false assumption. The thoughtful musings by the many young contributors to the book, edited by Wayne…