What are we?
What is our life?
What is our goodness?
What is our righteousness?
What is our help?
What is our strength?
What is our might?
- Prayers from the
Daily Morning Service
Each Morning half-awake and usually resentful, I painfully mutter these questions at the beginning of the morning prayer service, Shacharit, as prescribed by my tradition. It has only been a few weeks since my S8-year-old father died from pancreatic cancer, and I am enjoined for the next eleven months to awaken near dawn to pray for his soul with a quorum of 10 people, a minyan. read more...
This morning was pretty typical. I had a sick kid home from school, and by noon I had the telephone repair man fixing our line, a deadline for an article, a stack of 150 invitations to address and a 15-month-old waiting for lunch. I am a rabbi, author, lecturer and teacher when I’m not parenting three small children and taking care of my husband. Every day is chaotic. I imagine your days are not too different.
So how do we juggle to-do lists, work, family and friends and still take care of ourselves? How can we bring that balance we felt at Canyon Ranch into our daily lives?
read more...
When I was a kid at the Passover seder, I actually held my breath when it came time to for Elijah to show up. My brother would open the door and race back to his seat where he and I would stare intensely at Elijah’s cup, waiting. A few distractions later and one of us would swear that the cup had less wine than before. My father would take those moments to teach us about what Elijah meant to the Jews. He taught us that we were supposed to be waiting for redemption with a capital “R.” I had no idea what that meant. I was just waiting for something exciting to happen. I was waiting for magic.
As a child there is not a lot that you can do to change your world. So I was waiting for Elijah to do it for me. Now I watch my own children stare at Elijah’s cup just as intently as I did. How do I teach them the delicate balance between having faith and doing something in the meantime? read more...
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