A Special Purim Message
03/04/2015 02:15:17 PM
Here we are on the brink of another Purim, the crazy Holiday of paradoxes where nothing appears to be what it really is and so much remains hidden. The darkness and fear for the Jews of Shushan in the story told in Esther’s scroll is a mirror for our world, where macabre forces in the world, around us and within us are frightening and perplexing. Some people find this Holiday so difficult to digest with its...Read more...
How Not to be Like Sodom
02/11/2015 02:16:09 PM
Rabbi Yehudah said: They issued a proclamation in Sodom saying: “Everyone who strengthens the hand of the poor and the needy with a loaf of bread shall be burnt by fire!” Pirke DeRabbi Eliezer 25
Most of us think of the sins of Sodom in the biblical tradition connected to sexual immorality above all else, with the brutal story of the Sodomites wanting to rape the strangers who have been taken in by Abraham’s nephew...Read more...
Read more... Vote for a Green Israel in the Jewish Parliament
01/18/2015 02:18:32 PM
Did you know that there is an International Parliament of the Jewish People? It represents all of us and we can all vote and be represented in Israel. The elections for the World Zionist congress are happening right now and you can make your...Read more...
"I Can't Breathe!" Parshat Vayishlach - December 2014
12/07/2014 02:19:38 PM
“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” I hear Yaakov crying out these words as he wrestles all night long with an angel that may be his own conscience, suffocating him to examine his integrity and take responsibility, standing tall in his world with authenticity and pride. A voice echoed in all of us as we struggle to make sense of a broken world and stand up to play our part in...Read more...
Dedicating the Light and Dedicating the Light: A Double Hanukkah Celebration!
12/04/2014 02:21:06 PM
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A Very Sad Day in Israel
11/19/2014 02:22:29 PM
Friends,
We woke up this morning to such terrible news and I have been feeling sick in my heart all day. The brutal and viscous terror attack on people finishing their morning prayers, many of them still in their tallit and tefillin, in a Synagogue in a religious neighborhood of Jerusalem, leaves us speechless and stunned. It is a shocking tragedy and an act of meaningless violence from which nothing good...Read more...
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Read more... Letting Go and Beginning Again - Yom Kippur 5775
10/04/2014 02:26:33 PM
How do you fall asleep at night after a long, hard day? Music, candles, a little prayer? Curled up with your loved one? Hugging your favorite pillow or stuffed toy? On Rosh HaShanah, I asked about how you wake up and spoke of grateful awareness and a wakefulness to a day of service to the world. Going to sleep is more of a letting go, a kind of surrender into the darkness. Some people have the tradition of...Read more...
Israel: the Myth, the Dream, the Reality - Rosh HaShanah 5775 (Second Day)
09/28/2014 02:27:43 PM
The tale is told of an old man who groaned from his heart. The doctors were sent for, and they advised him to drink goat’s milk. He went out and bought a she-goat and brought her into his home. Not many days passed before the goat disappeared. They went out to search for her but did not find her. She was not in the yard and not in the garden, not on the roof of the study-house and not by the spring, not in the hills and not in the fields....Read more...
Waking Up More! Rosh HaShanah 5775 (First Day)
09/27/2014 02:29:05 PM
Waking up, Waking up more! Rosh HaShanah 5775 – First Day
Wake up! Wake up! Wakey wakey, rise and shine. Good morning, boker tov….Boboboboker tov!!! How do you like to be woken up in the morning? There are so many ways we can transition from sleeping to waking.
On July 4th this year here in Boulder was the funeral of someone who will for sure be seen as one of the...Read more...
A Statement on Israel
09/03/2014 02:30:32 PM
Friends,
This has been a very tough summer in so many ways, especially for our friends and family in Israel who themselves or their loved ones have been serving in the military, or having to go daily to the shelter or stairwells as the sirens warn of the perpetual rockets being launched by Hamas from Gaza. I have also become painfully aware of the sense of frustration and isolation that many of the Israelis...Read more...
Read more... A Bat Mitzvah to Remember - Tribal Blessings
07/14/2014 02:33:10 PM
I am delighted to say that all of the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs that we celebrate at Bonai Shalom are memorable and joyous We mark this rite of passage for a young person and celebrate the amazing achievement of learning and preparing so much in order to stand in front of the congregation and take their place in the community. Most of our Bnei Mitzvah read Torah, Haftarah (a selection from the Prophets), get called up to the...Read more...
Lila Crank's Bat Mitzvah Dvar Torah
07/13/2014 02:34:17 PM
Parshat Pinchas – July 12th, 2014, Bonai Shalom
by Lila Crank
Shabbat Shalom. I am so incredibly happy that all of you could be here on my special day and that I am here standing before you now as a woman. This is such a privilege especially because in places like Nigeria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, girls and women are treated with great disrespect. Some are shot at just because they...Read more...
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Read more... Sandy Cohn Eulogy
04/01/2014 02:39:24 PM
Sandy Cohn – Shulamit bat Pinchas v’Chaya z”l
2/12/47 – 4/1/14
Eulogy delivered by Rabbi Marc on 4/3/14 at Har HaShem
Sandy would have loved to see all of us here today, people gathered from all over the country, family and friends. So many people. People she has adored. But she would not have liked the fact that it is all about her; she would be deflecting the attention away from her and back...Read more...
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Read more... Happy Thanksgivukkah!
11/27/2013 02:42:20 PM
Friends,
According to some, it will be 7,500 years before Thanksgiving and Hanukkah coincide again as they do tonight and tomorrow!
There are, of course, similar themes to these two holidays and when they converge, I suppose our sense of gratitude and appreciation for all of the large and small miracles in our lives, and for the people we love and those we don’t even know increase exponentially!
It has been a hard...Read more...
Read more... After the Flood - A Prayer
09/18/2013 02:44:54 PM
By Marc Soloway, Congregation Bonai Shalom, Boulder, CO
Out of the depths of the flood waters we cry out to you El Shaddai, to say “dai — enough. It has been enough.”
Let the drowning earth dry out once again and show us the reassuring promise of your rainbow!
As we celebrate the joy of the gift of water and as we prepare to pray for rain, let us remember that when it is withheld, the...Read more...
Violence - 2nd Day Rosh HaShanah 5774
09/10/2013 02:46:00 PM
Back in April, I was invited by Father Ted Howard to participate in a discussion at St. John’s Episcopal Church on the theme of violence in scripture. A light subject as part of the Christian Holy week. Our religious texts have so much in them that is violent and yet we want to believe that the core message of our traditions is love and compassion. That night I discovered, of course, that some Christians believe that what...Read more...
Embracing Doubt - 1st Day Rosh HaShanah 5774
09/09/2013 02:46:08 PM
A few years ago, one Shabbat morning in Jerusalem, I was part of a very popular community called Shirah Chadashah and I found myself sitting behind two of the greatest contemporary Jewish thinkers, philosophers of the generation. Rabbi David Hartman, the influential, liberal Orthodox founder of the enlightened Hartman Center, who died earlier this year, and his son-in-law, philosophy professor, Moshe...Read more...
A Eulogy for Kathy Meals
05/01/2013 02:48:15 PM
Kathleen Ann Meals
Elianna Segulah bat Avraham v’Sarah z”l
8/27/50 – 4/29/13
“Cops and Jews”
“Aishet Chayil mi yimtzah, v’rachok mip’ni’nim michrah. A woman of valor. A strong woman, who can find her? Her worth is above rubies,” says the Book of Proverbs.” Who can find her? We found one in Kathy...Read more...