Rabbi Bonnie Koppell
God Was In This Place God is IN This Place Rabbi Bonnie Koppell As our parsha opens, Jacob is scared, and rightfully so. Jacob had stolen the blessing of the firstborn that belonged to his brother. His brother, Esav, is so hurt and angry that he is ready…
Thanksgiving IS a Jewish Holiday Rabbi Bonnie Koppell Thanksgiving is a quintessentially Jewish holiday. First of all, there is traditionally a family gathering with lots of food. But beyond that, giving thanks is A, I might say, THE, foundational Jewish value. Hakarat ha-tov, recognizing, appreciating, and giving thanks for the…
“Ah, Harry, we have to stumble through so much dirt and humbug before we reach home. And we have no one guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.”- Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf If we are really blessed, home is a place of comfort and acceptance, of warmth and love. …
“All births mean separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more the embrace…
“One only understands the things that one tames.”. . . “What is essential is invisible to the eye.”. . . “You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”. . . “but the eyes are blind, one must look with the heart.”- Antoine de St. Exupery, The Little Prince …
“Mankind? It is an abstraction. There are, always have been, and always will be men and only men.”- Goethe Whatever our grand ideas are of humanity and the human enterprise, Goethe once again brings us into the ordinary world of our everyday lives. That is where the real challenge…
“What is important in life is life and not a result of life.”- Goethe Mindfulness. Living in the moment. Goethe reminds us to focus on how we live our lives each day. He was very much of a renaissance man himself, with a breadth and depth of interests. So…
My Life in Quotes- #6 “The great fault of us all is that we force logic on facts, whereas it is facts themselves that create logic.”- ibid. (D.T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism) You have to face the facts. There’s no hiding from that reality. We don’t have to like the…
“Those seekers of wide learning are like hairs (i.e. too many), whereas those who understand the truth are like horns (i.e. too few).”- ibid.- I use ibid. in my quotes document when I quote the same source in multiple entries, but that doesn’t work when I view them independently. …
My Life in Quotes #4 “. . . through the awakening of love we get a glimpse into the infinity of things. . . “- D.T. Suzuki, Zen Buddhism When I read this quote, I don’t think I had yet experienced love in an adult sense. As a young…