Life Reflections
Kisses and Memory
Posted by Rabbi Menachem Creditor | Tags: Life Reflections
Yom HaShoah VeHagevurah 5768: "Kisses and Memory" Rabbi Menachem Creditor There are days in which the simplest things carry incalculable meaning. Today is one such day. Yom HaShoah VeHagevurah, our Day of Holocaust and Heroism, amplifies every experience of life to a heightened place. A...
What Does it Mean?
Posted by Rabbi Menachem Creditor | Tags: Life Reflections
Rabbi Menachem Creditor in memory of Scott Silberman, z"l In Dara Horn's work of spiritual fiction "The World to Come", she portrays Marc Chagall and the enigmatic Yiddish poet Der Nister (The Hidden One) as teachers at a Ukranian school for Jewish orphans. Der Nister sees a blue painting...
One Rabbi's Reflection
Posted by Rabbi Menachem Creditor | Tags: Life Reflections
Rabbi's Reflection © Rabbi Menachem Creditor I love being a rabbi. At any given moment, a thousand urgent things can happen. And sometimes I can do some reading. In any interaction, what was casual conversation can explode with profundity. And sometimes heavy conversations are lightened...
My God Doesn't Take
Posted by Rabbi Menachem Creditor | Tags: Life Reflections
Rabbi Menachem Creditor I cringe every time I recite "The Lord gives, the Lord takes, blessed be the Name of God," in the Book of Job. And I recite it often, at funerals and in mourning rituals. When my mentor Rabbi Neil Gillman challenged a class of almost-rabbis to translate the Hebrew phrase...
Welcoming Visitors in the Synagogue
Posted by Al Kustanowitz | Tags: Life Reflections
This Sukkot, we had the honor of hosting a relative who happens to be an esteemed rabbi and scholar. On the first day he wanted to get to shul at the start of services, a goal that I strongly support but don’t often achieve. So I sent him off, with etrog and lulav in hand, and a plan to connect a...
Writing Your Own Torah - On Your Wedding Day and Every Day
Posted by Al Kustanowitz | Tags: Life Reflections
One of the 613 mitzvot, in fact the last of the 613, is that every Jew should write a copy of the Torah. It is derived from the passage in Parshat Vayelech that says “V’atem kitvu lachem et hashira hazot” – “So now, write this song for yourselves.” Our sages derive from this verse that every Jew...
What is on your Jewish to-do-list
Posted by Jonathan Ginsburg | Tags: Life Reflections
To Do Lists Scratch another off the list September 2, 2007 Chgo Tribune Sunday "We were jotting down a few items for our customary Saturday errand list when we heard about a new Web site dedicated to lists. It's called Meosphere -- a perfect name, really -- and it offers list enthusiasts a...
Cubs game? No, a wake.
Posted by Jonathan Ginsburg | Tags: Life Reflections
Cubs? No-Wake I'm in the locker room this am after working out and a guy in my section says to another guy- "dressing down today? Must be a Cub's game." The guy answers, "no, its my brothers wake. Did not feel up to going into work." The rest of us offered condolences and asked about the brother....
Freud's view of Judaism shaping the world:
Posted by Jonathan Ginsburg | Tags: Life Reflections
From New York Times on Freud's view of Judaism shaping the world: "Part of the appeal of Greek religion lay in the fact that it offered adherents direct, and often gorgeous, renderings of the immortals — and also, perhaps, the possibility of meeting them on earth. With its panoply of saints,...
Alex the Parrot before he died: "You be good, see you tomorrow. I love you.”
Posted by Jonathan Ginsburg | Tags: Life Reflections
1. Alex the parrot Calm down," Alex, an African Gray parrot, told Dr. Irene Pepperberg, the scientist at the University of Arizona who owns him. "Don't tell me to calm down," Dr. Pepperberg snapped. Sometimes Dr. Pepperberg and Alex squabble like an old married couple. He even says, "I love...
