HUC-JIR Candidate for Rabbinic Ordination 2022

There is an old Jewish folktale, and it goes something like this... In a small town somewhere in Eastern Europe lived a nice man with a nasty problem: he talked too much about other people. He could not help himself. Whenever he heard a story about somebody he knew, and sometimes about somebody he did not know, he just had to tell it to his friends. Since he was in business, he heard a lot of rumors and stories. He loved the attention, and was delighted when they laughed beca

In Abraham Joshua Heschel’s writing “Entering the Synagogue,” he asks: “What does a person expect to attain when entering the synagogue? In pursuit of learning, one goes to a library; for aesthetic enrichment, one goes to the art museum; for pure music, to the concert hall. What then, is the purpose of going to the synagogue? Where should one learn the general wisdom of compassion? The fear of being cruel? The danger of being callous? Where should one learn that the greatest

There was once a chaplain who visited a jail to deliver a sermon to the inmates. While ascending the podium to speak, he tripped and fell flat on his face. The room erupted in laughter. He picked himself up and went over to the podium and said, "I have just concluded my sermon; the moral is that even when a person falls flat on his face, he can rise up again. The important thing is to never give up hope." This evening we celebrate Shabbat Shuvah, Shabbat of return. As Jews, w