One of my favorite shul memories from my childhood is going with my Zayde to services on Shabbat morning. He had a regular ritual that during the Haftorah he and his friends would disappear from services into the small kitchen for a l’chaim.
During Tashlikh, we symbolically transfer on to bread crumbs those actions and failings that no longer serve us, just as our ancestors transferred their sins on to the "scape goat" of antiquity. Over the last twenty years or so, this minor custom has seen a major revival in many communities.
Now the real fun starts. We’re going to do some Rosh HaShanah math. Don’t worry, this is fun math. And that’s coming from me, for whom there is no more moronic oxymoron than “fun math.” And since it’s yuntif, I won’t ask you to show your work. Ready? Here we go.
As we prepared for our move to Portland last year, the question nearly every person asked us was “Have you watched Portlandia?” We did actually catch some of the series to see what it was all about, but it’s after having lived here for over a year that the humor in the uniqueness of our city has become perfectly clear.
Oasis Songs: Musings from Rav D Thursday, September 10, 2015 /26 Elul 5775 This Friday night, Ilene Safyan and I have selected melodies to our traditional Shabbat liturgy that we hope will be in keeping with our national observance of 9/11. We are dedicating it as a musical tone poem commemorating the thousands of victims of 9/11. I hope you will be able to join us. To be a Jew is an opportunity to share ... Read More
Our Back to Shul BBQ this past Sunday was jam packed as friends old and new got reacquainted. We had the opportunity to listen to some remarks by our president, Rich Meyer and Rabbi Posen. We also were moved by Cantor B's stirring rendition of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's Return Again.
I am a suburbanite through and through. While other people live and die by the big city and the need to be part of it, as Steve Perry knows, I’m just a small town girl. I like being big-city-adjacent. I feel much more at home in my personal vehicle than taking public transportation.
