Rabbi Bonnie Koppell
This year I turned seventy. I’ve never been shy about my age. Never one of those- it’s the 31st anniversary of my 39th birthday kind of people. I know too many wonderful people who died way too young to not appreciate the blessing of each year, each day! So I…
160. “A reporter asked Albert Einstein, “Why is it that we can make atomic bombs, but we can’t make peace?” Einstein replied, “It is because politics is much more complicated than atomic physics.””- quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer Book Review section, June 26, 1983, p. 3 When I was young…
What Is Truth? Every year, before Rosh Hashanah, we spend time looking within. Have I been kind? Have I been generous? Have I become the person I hoped to become? Â Tonight I’d like to ask an even more fundamental question. Have I been truthful? Not just, “Have I avoided telling…
This week’s Torah portion is called, Ki Tavo- when you arrive. The Israelites stand poised to enter the promised land. They are about to arrive at the destination towards which they have been traveling for 40 years. But, life doesn’t stop there. The text continues with guidance on how…
Have you found this to be true? Ironically it is sometimes easier to pray when life is difficult than to remember God when life is good. In this week’s Torah portion, Ekev, Moses prepares the Israelites for a future they have never known. They have spent forty years in the…
Shema and V’ahavta. You know these prayers, right? It might have been one of the very first prayers you ever learned. Parents whisper it to their children at night, and it might be the last words said when life draws to a close. Yet how much attention…
149. “I felt like a fraud. So I learned to fly an airplane. So I crossed the Atlantic in a rowboat. So I took a space shot to the moon. On the trip home I thought, “A fraud has circled the moon.” So I took a full page ad in…
Korach- Can we Agree to Disagree? At first glance, Korach sounds surprisingly modern. Standing before Moses and Aaron, Korach accuses them: “All the community are holy, all of them, and the Holy One is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above God’s people? (Numbers 16:3). It is…
The Israelites stand poised to enter the promised land. Moses appoints representatives from each tribe to scout the land and assess the situation. Forty days later the spies return with a discouraging report. Ten of the twelve describe fortified towns inhabited by powerful giants. Their famous conclusion is…
136. “. . . (had nothing to do with) the invisible power that taught him how to breathe from within and control his heartbeats, and that had permitted him to understand why men are afraid of death.”- Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, p. 35 This quote is a flashing…