Blog
TWO RABBIS WALK INTO A CHURCH
Last week, I found myself walking into Prospect Presbyterian Church in Maplewood. Rabbi Allie Klein, a colleague from TSTI, had…
WHAT'S WONDERFUL ABOUT PARKING OUTSIDE RALPH LAUREN
For logistical reasons related to parenting obligations and medical appointments, I spent a few days earlier this week in the…
Happy Jewish Book Month
Happy Jewish Book Month! Begun in 1924 as Jewish Book Week by a Jewish librarian who worked at the Boston…
THANKSGIVING, GRATITUDE, AND WHATSAPP
A father is weeding the family garden with his young daughter. They are bickering. “If I can stop whining,” the…
HOW DO YOU KNOW?
The alarm interrupted a dream about my son (Jonah) surprising me at home. In the dream he wasn’t feeling well…
INTO THE UNKNOWN: LECH L’CHA IN A POST-ELECTION WEEK
I’ve told the story before: of a woman who, as part of a long illness, found she could not eat.…
THE ONE YOU FEED: ELECTIONS AND ANXIETY
A snippet of a phone conversation yesterday with a friend: Me: Hi, how are you?Friend (a bit down): Y’know, I’m…
Build It and They Will Come
The story of Noah and the ark has something for everyone: there are cute animals for the little ones, a…
Kol Nidre 2024 Address
The jarring notes of the shofar — they have always mesmerized me. I can recall being a child attending the…
OUR ONE PRECIOUS LIFE
To watch this sermon, delivered on Yom Kippur 2024, click here. If I am honest, I want more than my…
SHOWING UP FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE
To watch this sermon, delivered October 3, 2024, click here. Sebastian Junger is now an accomplished journalist but he had…
A Wealth of Holiday Books For Kids
Quite some time ago when I first became involved with Jewish libraries, there was not much to choose from in…
Reflections on This Time of Year
The poet T.S. Eliot wrote that April is the cruelest month, a quote often taken out of context. But I…
GETTING READY FOR ROSH HASHANAH, IN WAR AND IN HOPE
https://youtu.be/N_QcLqudMUc?si=sEE5fXQpdwKqxnhl We learned a lot this week, the Jewish community, about war and loss and grief and senseless violence and…
THE OLYMPICS, JOSEPHUS, AND THE ENGLISH COTTON MERCHANT
We are not much of a TV-during-dinner family, but for the Olympics, we gather to watch the daily recap over…
ON POTHOLES AND GRATITUDE
New life experience: watching as someone steals your packages off your front stoop. Not a thing when you live on…
ON FRUSTRATION (and what happens when the long road is the only road)
This week I went hiking and found myself thinking about frustration and how we hold effort, despair and resilience. And…
JULY 4: SHINE BRIGHT
When the kids were little, we used to take them to visit my in-laws for July 4. My (very wonderful)…
MINT OREOS AND THOSE 2,000 YEAR-OLD TEFILLIN
It only took until Tuesday. It wasn’t the Mint Oreos that Naomi brought home from Target, though they didn’t help…
RAFAH, COMPASSION, AND HOLDING MULTIPLE TRUTHS
Maybe because of the images from Rafah all week, maybe out of a sense of being misunderstood, or maybe because…
SERVICE, SERVICES, SERVING: A Note for Memorial Day
In today’s America, the idea that we are obligated to serve—that our lives are somehow to be “of service”— feels…
PESACH: WHAT STORY ARE WE IN?
“All… adults have only known Jews who were strong enough to help us,” he said, “and now the idea that you need our help…
IS THERE A BLESSING FOR AN ECLIPSE?
Just as we were preparing to send this week’s message, the Earth shook. All the more reason to click below…
ON BASEBALL, THE BACHELOR, AND BOREDOM
I watched “The Bachelor” finale with my daughter this week. How emotionally intense it wanted to be! Daisy was brought…
ARE WE INTERNALIZING ANTISEMTISM?
My intention this week had been to keep it light. After all, we brought in the month of Adar this…
ON WRITING, AVOIDANCE, AND SHOWING UP FOR EACH OTHER
Somewhere in the space between reluctance to commit and the sense of being too busy, I have found a million…
DAYS OF REMEMBRANCE
We Jews have so many holidays and days of remembrance. From Nissan 1, the first day of Passover, marking the…
STRETCHING OUR HEARTS AS BIG AS THEY WILL GO
As many of you know, I served at a congregation in Ohio as an interim rabbi the year prior to…
T-DAY TRIVIA
Did you know that the Hebrew word hodu means both turkey and give thanks? So hodu for hodu. In Yiddish,…
ON HEARTBREAK AND HOPE
Rabbi Treu joined a small group of clergy for a 36-hour Solidarity Mission to Israel organized by Greater MetroWest Federation…
NOAH’S ARK
I can’t imagine any Torah story that has been interpreted so many times and in so many ways. It’s a…
AN OP-ED WE DID NOT WANT TO WRITE
When we first got word of the Hamas Simchat Torah massacre we were sad and brokenhearted. But we know the…
TALK TO YOUR KIDS ABOUT ISRAEL
We don’t have the words to properly express how we are feeling. For me personally I have never been so…
GENERATIONS
Family lore has it that Grandpa Julius, my father’s father, was the only man in the shtetl of Skidel with…
MAKING THE WORLD BETTER THROUGH LAUGHTER
Who remembers Norman Cousins?Norman Cousins was a nice Jewish boy, who grew up not far from here in Union City,…
ANNIVERSARIES
Anniversaries are something to look forward to with joy, sadness, appreciation, or awe. On August 29th, we marked the 60th…
TIME TO PREPARE
When you see this at Costco, you know that the Days of Awe, the High Holidays, will soon be upon…
THE JEWISH CATALOG TURNS FIFTY
Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to The Jewish Catalog. How old are you now? This…
PRIDE MONTH AT JACOBS LIBRARY
Although each of us should be proud of who we are every month of the year, June is officially PRIDE…
ON THE MYSTERY AND MAGIC OF CHAROSET
In our family, it is the matzah balls that win the nostalgia award. The brisket, too, but sometimes that is…
THE JEWISH RELATIONSHIP WITH MLK
We celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life in just a few days. His relationship with the Jewish community was marked…
ANTI-SEMITISM TODAY
Earlier this week, I was astounded to log in to one of the news websites I read regularly and see…
OHEB AT THE ISAIAH HOUSE
When I was in high school, I spent a large part of my time and energy helping people who were…
JEWISH IDENTITY IN SPORTS
Jewish baseball is hot right now. Team Israel heads to the Olympics, in itself a minor miracle as Israel has…
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