This was my D’var Torah for Parashat Bereshit 5785 (October 26, 2025), the start of the new Torah reading cycle. Here’s a short video that does some of this from a similar angle. Some of the best cookbooks are mostly not recipes. Each dish is the occasion for a story – of someone special in Continue Reading »
Yossi Aptalon z”l Before we recite the Mourners’ Kaddish every week, we hear a list of names of people who have died in the past year. When the first Yahrzeit passes, the name is removed from the list. The name Yossi Aptalon has been on the list since October, 2023. His name has been the Continue Reading »
Welcome to the first in a series of short weekly teachings about Jewish ethics, jumping off from the parasha, the Torah portion. The first chapter of the Torah is about the power of speech and the ethics of speech. God creates everything through speech. On the first day, God simply says y’hi or, let there Continue Reading »
From Rabbi Jon — my updated list of recommendations of my own Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur words spanning the past ten-plus years that I think stand the test of time: Hope In An Uncertain World (5777/2016) What the Chanukkah dreidel can teach us about four kinds of hope. Who Knows? (5780/2019) How the story Continue Reading »
It’s Friday and here is my current draft of a D’var Torah for Shabbat morning on Parashat Balak, Numbers 22:2-25:9: In the parasha this week, an enemy of the Jews asks a man of powerful words to curse Israel. To say bad things about us in a way to bring us harm. And it doesn’t Continue Reading »
The Temple Beth Abraham Keter Shem Tov Committee is pleased to announce that this year’s honoree is Robin Rubin. Robin and her husband, Larry, joined TBA in 1994, and as their son, Michael, was a toddler at that time, Robin was soon recruited to help organize the following year’s High Holiday Babysitting. During the 30 Continue Reading »
October 2023 October 2023 October 2023 April 2024 April 2024 Five hundred daffodils, obtained as part of Am Yisrael Chai’s Daffodil Project, were planted at our newly created memorial garden at Temple Beth Abraham in Nashua on October 9, 2023. Congregants, neighbors, local and state public figures including Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess planted the bulbs. A mere Continue Reading »
Rabbi Karen G. Reiss Medwed and I recorded this conversation last night, and you can watch it on YouTube or listen as a podcast. The Megillah (the biblical Book of Esther) is a story of anti-Semitism set in the Diaspora in a multiethnic empire where Jews were living in peace. How did the Jews of the Continue Reading »
The Talmud proposes that on Purim we enter a state of mind in which we no longer know the difference between the goodness of Mordechai and the evil of Haman. At a key moment in the Megillah, when the fate of the Jews seems to lie in the balance, Mordechai proclaims to Esther not-so-emphatically “Who Continue Reading »
This is my current draft of a D’var Torah for Shabbat morning, March 23, 2024. This is my closing address of our six-week conference of the Society for the Advancement of Esther-Informed Spiritual Therapy. Today is Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat that comes before Purim. Shabbat Zachor is the dark set-up for a zany festival. Zachor Continue Reading »