In the Torah, shemen katith, beaten olive oil, was considered the best.  Made by pounding or crushing the olives with a mortar rather than using machinery, the process produces clear, pure oil, the only oil allowed to be used in…

Check this out, just since October our Tikkun Olam committee has conducted a High Holy Day food drive, hiked at Reinstein Woods, donated warm socks to the Friends of Night People, walked with Run for Their Lives Buffalo, collected dog…

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…

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…

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…

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…