Rabbi Bonnie Koppell
At Kabbalat Shabbat we reflect on the week that is drawing to a close. My week has been consumed by images of Afghanistan, where I was privileged to spend Chanukkah on two separate tours, in Kandahar, Bagram, and an obscure Forward Operating Base on the border of Pakistan. I think…
Tonight we come together to pray for healing for our beloved community. We have been through an incredibly challenging time in the history of our congregation. We are breathing in a spirit of peace and the deepest hope that we can move forward with a spirit of unity: of caring,…
The name of this week’s Torah portion is “Vaetchanan.” The word can be translated as- “I begged, I pleaded, I entreated.” It is a poignant and heartbreaking moment. Think about the times in your life when you wanted something so desperately that you begged, pleaded, or entreated someone for them? …
There is a lot of anger in this week’s Torah portion. Beginning with verbal commitments made by women which can be nullified by the men in their lives, to revenge taken against the Midianites, to the tribes that want to stay on the east side of the Jordan. Protection is…
Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Comfort. It’s an actual date ON the Jewish calendar. It occurs every summer, in the 7 weeks of comfort and consolation following Tisha B’Av. This year those 7 weeks begin on July 23, which is the OFFICIAL Shabbat Nachamu. This year I have a proposal. …
This week’s parsha is named for Korach, who, in my humble opinion is one of the people in the Torah who gets a bad rap. What did Korach do that was so terrible? He challenged Moses’ authority, wondering who put Moses in charge and why leadership is not shared more…
JCC Association | April 8, 2021 How hard, or easy, is it for you to say, “I was wrong, I apologize, please forgive me.” For me, and for many of us, it is impossibly challenging to get those words out of our mouths. We rationalize, we defend, we obfuscate, we…
A year ago when we celebrated Pesach, I don’t think we realized that we were actually ENTERING Egypt, Mitzrayim, the narrow place, the place of confinement. A year later, we read the Haggadah through an entirely new lens. The brilliance of our tradition and rituals is that the depth of…
Here are a couple of interesting numbers: 14, 981 17, 896 23, 746 Any idea what they represent? These are the number of days that each of us has been alive- Cantor Wolman, the youngest- 14,981. Rabbi Mari- 17,896, and I, who just celebrated my 65th birthday, 23, 746. By…
It’s still Purim! Shushan Purim is a thing every year. Even in the time of Mordecai and Esther, Purim was celebrated on a different day in Shushan than in other cities, per chapter 9 of the Megillah. It took a little longer in Shushan for the violence to dissipate and…