Our Writings

The rumor is that Spring is finally here(ish) as we see light green begin to appear on the various branches that have too often been covered with snow. We are also at the beginning of the book of B’Midbar, Numbers, which seems to be a parallel to another set of books, but I’ll get to […]

What the Ashes Teach Us What the Ashes Teach Us By Rabbi Jim Egolf I always find that ashes cause my internal reflection to ask, ‘what was this?’  There is something about ashes that invites my curiosity.  What clues are there of an object or place and is now reduced to something charred? Ironically in […]

Katie Fitch became a Bat Mitzvah on Saturday, May 23rd, Shavuot. Below is her D’var on the 10 Commandments. I have always understood the Ten Commandments as the foundation of our covenant with G*d, a baseline for holiness as well as an aspiration to carry into our lives each day. At first glance, these are […]

A Tale of Two Hands… I recently went to a study session wherein we explored the idea of Ellu v’Eilu devrei Elohim Chayim, ‘both these and these are the words of the living God.’  The Talmud reports that this was uttered by a Divine voice when the houses of Hillel and Shammai were arguing (perhaps […]

It is Pesach season again. My fiancé and I got into our car and headed to The Grove in Cleveland, a kosher market with two isles of dry kosher for Passover…everything. I truly never am aware of how many items fall into this category until I got to such a market and look up and […]

Dear Temple Emanu-El, This weekend we will end the book of Exodus. It is Jewish tradition to say the words Khazak Khazak, v’nitkhazeik – Strength, Strength and may we be strengthened. Though in our society I often wonder about how we hear, act and live this word…strength. When the Torah concludes we hear about God’s […]

Dear Temple Emanuel, This week we celebrated Purim, a story set in Persia about a malevolent power-hungry man who set out to kill all the Jews and who ordered the building of gallows…the very gallows where he would hang at the end of the story. Seems like a very familiar story, one that beginning of […]

Dear TEE community, I was moved to tears by the meaningful and beautiful gifts I received at last week’s Hanukkah party. (For those of you who couldn’t be there, I’ve included pictures.) The ark doors necklace sits close to my heart in a literal as well as symbolic sense. Our ark represents so many of […]

Dear TEE community, One of my happiest childhood memories is walking home from school on a snowy afternoon, anticipating our family Hanukkah celebration. I grew up at a time when Hanukkah was still pretty low key and the presents I got were things like coloring books and the crayons to go with them. Or, disappointingly, […]

There’s a particular exhaustion that comes at the end of Deuteronomy. Moses is dying. The people have wandered for forty years. We’ve heard the laws recited, the covenants restated, the warnings repeated. And then—the cycle ends. In a few moments, we’ll roll the scroll back to the beginning, and we’ll read again about a formless […]