‘“The Eternal spoke to Moses saying: Tell the Israelites that they should bring me an offering, from every person whose heart is willing, bring for me a gift” (Exodus 25:1-2). Grammatically, we must ask why it says a “gift,” which connotes raising up?’

This question brought me back to my 1st year biblical hebrew class, and the word used for an offering or gift, terumah. In that hebrew word are the root letters, resh and mem. These two letters can form words that mean to lift up, raise up, or make higher, and so on. The idea that when we give a gift, that we are elevated to a higher place. That we become closer to God, or to holiness itself. 

Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history.

Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Website: wbtla.org
Youtube: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Instagram: wilshireboulevardtemple

I received a text earlier this week from a congregant who sent me a picture of himself buying his first pair of tefillin. The picture was accompanied by the caption, “How my mornings start now.” To be honest, this is not someone I would have ever expected to wrap tefillin

Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history.

Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Website: wbtla.org
Youtube: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Instagram: wilshireboulevardtemple

It is always a good day when a child takes the words right out of a rabbi’s mouth. Last Sunday afternoon at religious school at the Resnick campus, I shared the story of this week’s Torah portion (as the Torah portion each week runs from Sunday-Saturday) with the Kindergarten-2nd Grade students. As I began the story of Moses confronting Pharaoh to let the Israelites out of slavery and into freedom, I told them that I had a question for them at the end, so they needed to listen very closely. We listed off each of the Ten Plagues together, which were brought on both by Pharaoh’s stubbornness and then God’s own part in hardening Pharaoh’s heart. I was just about to ask the big question that I had prepared them for when a little voice piped up. “Wait, why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart? Why would God do that?” My question exactly, I said.

Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history.

Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Website: wbtla.org
Youtube: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Instagram: wilshireboulevardtemple

This year, the opening and closing of the parashah Vayeitzei provide another unique view into our modern circumstances. 

Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history.

Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Website: wbtla.org
Youtube: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Instagram: wilshireboulevardtemple

This week, Rabbi Joel Nickerson was invited to speak to the student body at St. James Episcopal School, a K-6 school in Koreatown. How do you share what the Jewish community is experiencing right now with a predominantly non-Jewish audience and in a way that is age-appropriate for Kindergarten through 6th-grade students? 

You tell the truth, and you focus on hope.  I share it with you today because I think it is essential for each of us to find our own ways to share the current Jewish experience with our non-Jewish friends, colleagues, peers, and acquaintances.

Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history.

Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Website: wbtla.org
Youtube: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Instagram: wilshireboulevardtemple

This week’s torah portion, Chayei Sarah, directly follows the episode of the “Akeida”, where God orders Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac. Throughout the centuries, there have been countless studies devoted to the incomprehensible dedication shown by Abraham in his willingness to follow through on God’s command. We’re astonished that Abraham could put aside the compassion he obviously felt for his son and resignedly carry out the dreadful task he had been dealt.

We’re never told what Abraham’s wife, Sarah, knew of his plan that day. But if she had even an inkling of Abraham’s intentions…well, as a fellow mother, I can intuitively imagine the storm of anxiety and despair that would have been raging in her breaking heart. This boy, Isaac—for whom Sarah had prayed; whom Sarah had carried for nine months; whom all of Sarah’s hopes and dreams were bound up in—was in grave danger, and there was nothing his mother could do to protect him. Considering the heart-stopping anxiety Abraham and his family must have endured through this ordeal, it perhaps comes as little surprise when we learn, at the start of this week's subsequent torah passage, that Sarah has passed…

Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history.

Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Website: wbtla.org
Youtube: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Instagram: wilshireboulevardtemple

Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history.

Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Website: wbtla.org
Youtube: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Instagram: wilshireboulevardtemple

Our Torah portion this week, Ki Tavo, includes an important mitzvah for tending to these fruits and crops. As Deut. 26 teaches, when the bikkurim, the first fruits of the season, appear in your fields, you must gather them up and bring them to the priests as an offering to God. We cannot eat them ourselves. It is a curious offering, however, because the first produce of the crop is often not the best. 

Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history.

Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Website: wbtla.org
Youtube: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Instagram: wilshireboulevardtemple

Just before the start of Summer, my husband and I experienced a right of passage for any Jewish parent. We witnessed our oldest son be “Shabbat Boy,” at Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s Early Childhood Center.

One of the highlights of the morning was the “mitzvah song.” The whole class (grown ups included) sits around in a circle, while the Shabbat child, in this case, Joey, walks around collecting each child’s tzedakah, their charity for Shabbat. 

Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history.

Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Website: wbtla.org
Youtube: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Instagram: wilshireboulevardtemple

The images coming out of Israel earlier this week seemed to offer a different, more somber version of the gathering I had attended. On Monday, the government’s coalition in the Knesset approved a provision that removed the Supreme Court’s authority to determine if a government decision is ‘reasonable’, popularly known as the ‘reasonableness clause.’  Most Israelis saw this clause as an important element of checks and balances to ensure government coalitions didn’t make decisions that unreasonably preferenced certain groups or minimized the role of others. While most agree that elements of the Israeli judicial system could benefit from some ‘reforms’, the months of protests seem to represent an awakening among Israelis that the government’s strategies for implementing such reforms don’t align with most Israelis’ understanding of how Israel’s democracy should operate.

Each week, a member of the clergy offers their personal perspective on a topic of their choice, such as the week's Torah portion, a Jewish holiday, ritual, custom, or history.

Facebook: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Website: wbtla.org
Youtube: Wilshire Boulevard Temple
Instagram: wilshireboulevardtemple