Torah Thoughts – Mishpatim – Exodus.21.1-24.18 – “The Challenge of Snow Days”
Deciding on a snow day is hard. I’ve made enough of these difficult calls for Shir Shalom, to sympathize with our local school superintendents every time the weather in January and February gets a little murky. How much ice, how…
Springfest
Torah Thoughts – Yitro – Exodus.18.1-20.23 – “The Streets of Minneapolis are Crying”
The Torah portion this week, Yitro, begins with Moses’ father-in-law arriving in the Israelite camp in response to something he heard. As the first verse states: “When Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law, heard of all that God had…
Torah Thoughts – Beshelach – Exodus 13:17-17:16 – “Life Inside the Trash Compactor”
My favorite scene from the original Star Wars movie is not the light saber fight between Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader or the proton torpedo shot that destroys the Death Star, but instead the near-death experience that the four…
Purim Carnival
Torah Thoughts – Bo – Exodus.10.1-13.16 – “What a Long Strange Trip It’s Been”
When Bob Weir, of Grateful Dead fame, wrote the song “Truckin’” he was thinking of the immense toll being a rock and roller can have on a person’s body and soul. As he told the Wall Street Journal: “[Our touring…
Havdalah and Game Night
Torah Thoughts – Vaera – Exodus.6.2-9.35 – “Which God is it Anyway?”
What if God was not one thing, but many things, able to appear in whatever form we need in whatever time we most need? One of my favorite midrashim of all time from the Pesikta de-Rav Kahana describes this possibility…
Torah Thoughts – Shemot – Exodus.1.1-6.1 – “Pharaoh and the Wisdom of Chelm”
Chelm, as anyone knows, is a mystical place in Poland full of folly, dressed as wisdom. There is a long tradition of stories about all the bad decisions made by the leaders of this small European shtetl. Shalom Aleichem, Isaac…