Changes
04/14/2021 02:48:03 PM
From our Education Director, Julia Gross Alexander:
Dear BHA Community,
Not quite three years ago, I was honored to be entrusted as the Education Director at BHA. I was excited to build on the foundation Ashley Baker...Read more...
Nazis are personal
04/07/2021 03:19:52 PM
The Nazis are personal for me. Perhaps they are for you as well.
I’m a rabbi with a mezuzah on my door and a rainbow flag on my front...Read more...
Discussion with Sabeeha Rehman & Walter Ruby on Shavuot
03/31/2021 01:39:44 PM
On Pesach, we celebrate our liberation from slavery; 49 days later, on Shavuot, we celebrate receiving the Torah’s wisdom at Mt Sinai.
This year, to celebrate Shavuot, we’ll be welcoming Sabeeha Rehman together with Walter Ruby to discuss...Read more...
Pesach Roundup 2021
03/23/2021 03:35:01 PM
This Saturday night, we will begin Passover - for many of
us, it will be our second Seder on Zoom, with its attendant blessings and curses. I want to share some resources here to help you prepare for Pesach, however you are celebrating it!
On Line Seder...Read more...
Fighting Nazis, yesterday & today
03/18/2021 01:44:27 PM
Those of us who are white skinned Jews live in a liminal space in the American racial hierarchy.
Sometimes - driving our car, walking through a store - we present as white and reap the unearned benefits of white skin privilege.
Other times, we are deeply aware of the fact that while we are not oppressed in the way that black and brown people often are, we are vulnerable in ways...Read more...
The Path from Charlottesville to Capitol Hill
03/10/2021 03:41:19 PM
Thursday, April 8 is Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.
While we like to think the horrors of the Nazis are history to be remembered, they are sadly part of our contemporary moment as well. In 2017, American neo-Nazis and other fascists gathered in Charlottesville, VA to “Unite the Right,” chanting “Jews will not replace us,” and murdering Heather Heyer.
Read more...
Liberal Judaism in Israel
03/03/2021 11:36:59 AM
Photo: Sebastian Scheiner/Associated Press
One of the strange peculiarities of contemporary Jewish life is that while in America, I am a rabbi and I teach Judaism, in Israel, I am not a rabbi and what...Read more...
Out of Narrow Places
02/24/2021 01:35:07 PM
This has been a harrowing, narrowing year.
Our worlds have contracted - to the size of our homes, to the size of a computer screen, to the people, if any, in our pod.
We are all in a narrow place these days.
Judaism’s...Read more...
Ecstatic Groceries
02/10/2021 04:01:57 PM
I like to davven in the forest, on the mountains, in the wild. The presence of the Creator somehow seems closer there, perhaps because my to-do list seems further away.
Of course, as peak experiences go, nothing compares to the experience that the Israelites...Read more...
Jokes and Old Age
02/03/2021 02:51:42 PM
There are two things I want to share with you - one light and easy, the other perhaps heavier and more complicated.
The light one is that we are slowly making our way towards Purim, which will be celebrated with hamantaschen baking, megilah reading, a...Read more...
