Conversations with the Rabbi

We are looking forward to an inspiring High Holy Days season and can’t wait to welcome you. One highlight: on Kol Nidre (Yom Kippur evening – October 1), we are thrilled to welcome the Divisi Strings Quartet to our bima, joining Daphnee Johnson, Kelly Dean, Andrew Lienhard, and our soloist (in her 8th year), Hannah Madeleine Goodman. Together, they will lift our spirits higher than ever before.

At CSK, everyone is welcome. No membership or dues are required to register. We simply invite your generosity, as even holy inspiration comes with earthly bills to pay. cskhouston.com

I’m not going to craft another list of facts to defend Israel’s moral military restraint or highlight the IDF’s legal and ethical accountability systems. I won’t recite doctrine or try to sanitize reality. Mistakes have been made—some unbearable. But I will point out that 381 million people live in the Middle East, and just 8 million Jews—.02% of the population—live in Israel because they are not allowed to live anywhere else in the region. Israel’s land mass makes up just .002% of the entire Middle East.

Some of you have suggested that I am naïve—perhaps willfully so. Others have told me I don’t truly understand Israelis, or that I’ve grown too “tribal.” Some have even gone so far as to imply that, by aligning myself too closely with the State of Israel, I’m complicit in something genocidal.

These are heavy times. These are heavy words.

And I know that for some of you, there’s a real disconnect between the rabbi you think you know and what you’ve heard me saying or seen me writing—especially since October 7, 2023.

(listen for the full blog or go to https://www.cskhouston.com/hearourvoice to read)

Sometimes, everything DOES depend on you.

Not every itch needs scratching, not every critique is worth airing. At least not now.

So much news, so much contradictory testimony, so much politically motivated, depending on which source you follow, depending on your particular algorithm. US Army Veteran George Schwartz and Rabbi Scott Hausman-Weiss believe that cooler heads should always prevail. This podcast, "Cooler Heads" relies upon provable and rational understandings of the events of the world and particularly how they impact our understanding of ourselves as Jews and Americans. In light of recent events, we have invited participants into the."studio" ask their questions. We believe that you as well we'll find them quite relevant and important. Join us! And please like us on YouTube it helps promote our podcast.

The reward is watching them grow independent. The reward is seeing that they no longer need us the way they once did. Not to stop traffic. Not to hold their hand. Just to stand there and cheer them on.

So every year, I do just that—with a lump in my throat and enormous gratitude. Because mentoring these students brings Torah to life for me. And that is the life I set out to live as a rabbi and a teacher.

Cooler Heads Ep 4 with Rabbi Scott and George Schwartz - "Lox and Loaded?" by Rabbi Scott Hausman-Weiss

The vitriol has to stop. Violence against we Jews is the logical outcome of virulent spewing of hate against Israel.

12 years and still growing!