by Shira Schechter (Moderator) | f 19, 2023 | Faith, God, Good and Evil, Israel, Psalms, Tests and Trials
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz When I sit down at my Shabbat dinner table and I am blessed to have my four children around me, something strange happens. I look at them but I don’t see them. I look at my 20-year-old daughter and see one moment, caught in time, with her in...
by Shira Schechter (Moderator) | f 8, 2023 | Good and Evil, Vezot Haberachah
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz The Torah is not really a very large book. In a mere 79,976 Hebrew words, the Torah (Five Books of Moses) covers all of history from the creation until the Jews were ready to enter the Land of Israel. With such a wide-reaching agenda, it...
by Shira Schechter (Moderator) | f 27, 2022 | Antisemitism, Community, Good and Evil, Psalms
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz When I rode a motorcycle in New York, I used to hang out at bars that catered to a very rough crowd. It amazed me that biker gangs made no attempt to hide their identity and affiliations. They wore their ‘colors’ with pride on the back of...
by Eliyahu Berkowitz | f 14, 2022 | God, Good and Evil, Justice, Psalms, Tests and Trials
David’s journey to kingship was not easy. Obstacles stood in his way and evil men attacked him. But David had a perspective on this that leveraged these difficulties to help his devotion to God. This was expressed in Psalm 11: Hashem seeks out the righteous man but...
by Shira Schechter (Moderator) | f 13, 2022 | Good and Evil, Justice, Psalms
By Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz In Hebrew, a person who returns to the faith is referred to as a baal teshuvah, literally ‘a master of repentance’. The word teshuva, however, also means ‘answer’. A secular friend once teased me, “Now that you are baal teshuva, you have all...
by Shira Schechter (Moderator) | f 27, 2022 | God, Good and Evil, Psalms
By Rabbi Avi Baumol Though the Book of Psalms was written by King David, one of Israel’s greatest kings, his heartfelt words speak to everyone. John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America who served as its second president from 1797 to...
