Last Saturday afternoon, Audrey Shine celebrated her Bat Mitzvah at CSS.  What made this particularly important not just to the Shine family, but to our entire CSS community, is that Audrey is the third generation of her family to become…

When we rise for the Barchu prayer on Friday Night, I often ask people to look around the room.  Then I say, “Each and every one of you is important to our service tonight.  Without you here, we would not…

This much we know; on October 7, at 6:30 in the morning that day Jerusalem time the attack began. Over 5,000 rockets were fired into Israel from Gaza in a span of 20 minutes. 2,900 Hamas militants stormed the border,…

The summer after eleventh grade, I worked at Camp Ramah in the Poconos. The camp was affiliated with the Conservative movement, but I considered myself Orthodox at the time. This often posed challenges for me over the course of the…

When the siren sounds in Israel at 11 am on Yom Hazikaron, everything stops.  Nary a household is without loss.  Nary a household is without pain.  The memories of loved ones struck down in faraway wars and recent battles flash…