My mother was an artist in her younger days. That played out in my own life as I was dragged first reluctantly and then happily to New York City’s many world class museums. I had a thing for English portrait and landscape painters as well as many of our early 20th century masters. The cubists, the pointillists, even the surrealists exerted their influence on me. 

Ben is a friend and a former congregant from our Cleveland days. He’s a veterinary radiologist who spends his days reading the x-rays of sick animals. He’s this big goofball with a huge heart, a house full of pets and a son-in-law who’s a rabbi. Ben also hails from Missouri and has five family members buried in the Jewish cemetery there that was recently vandalized. Fortunately, his family’s graves remained untouched.

This past Shabbat we observed the birthday of the trees known as Tu B’shvat. In recent decades, Tu B’Shvat has become the de facto day on which to focus on Judaism’s approach to environmental issues. This year that also coincided with Shabbat Shirah, the Sabbath of Song; it is called this because we read in the Torah the special poem that commemorates our successful crossing of yam suf, the Sea of Reeds.

As the children of Israel are perched at Egypt’s edge to freedom, we learn that a long made promise was about to be fulfilled. After four hundred years, Joseph’s last request to have his bones returned to the land of Israel is coming to fruition.

It was in my homiletics class. That’s one of the several classes we took in the art of sermonizing and our instructor was the great Rabbi David Wolpe. At one point, he said to us, “I’m a cat rabbi. There are dog rabbis and cat rabbis.” By this he meant that he ran cool and lived at a bit more of a remove.