✡ We Stand With the People of Israel ✡
By Rabbi Matt Derrenbacher One of the best-known texts from the entire Torah is the Sh’ma: וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכׇל–לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכׇל–נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכׇל–מְאֹדֶֽךָ: “Hear/Listen/Understand, Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The Sh’ma is recited every single day, once … Read More
By Rabbi Matt Derenbacher Guest Columnist At the beginning of August, I had the privilege of traveling to Israel for a rabbinic seminar hosted by Hebrew Union College and the Daniel Centers for Progressive Judaism in Tel Aviv. Over several … Read More
By Rabbi Matt Derrenbacher Guest Columnist At the end of May, I traveled to South Africa with Hebrew Union College and JDC Entwine, an initiative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Along with fellow rabbis, cantors, Jewish educators, and … Read More
By Andrew Adler Community Editor It was a question at once inevitable and unanswerable: How could one people hate another people so virulently, so murderously, to produce what became to be called the Holocaust? “I think the main reason was … Read More
By Rabbi Matt Derrenbacher The beginning of spring is one of my favorite times of year – the air is still brisk, the sun begins to shine more regularly, we get the refreshing rains, and we can feel the annual … Read More
By Rabbi Matthew Derrenbacher Not long ago, we began the book of Numbers, Bamidbar, which opens with God speaking to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai and commanding him to take a census of all the men age 20 and … Read More