Weekly D’var Torah
from Rabbi Misha Shulman
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by Rabbi Misha
The most liberating experience I had this Passover was hearing an artist talk about time. “We have to bring the past into balance,” she said.
by Rabbi Misha
On April 19, 1999, about 30 people sat in a Greenwich Village living room and decided to form a shul.
by Rabbi Misha
Monday night I found myself unable to sleep, sitting with this psalm. In the morning, when I woke up, I saw the terrible news about Israel’s renewed attacks.
by Rabbi Misha
On January 29th, I got an email from my neighbor, Julie, on my block’s email chain titled "Give a Damn, you're invited."
by Rabbi Misha
Yesterday a few people saw my name in the NY Times in print so tiny that the page could contain all 350 rabbis who signed an add titled “Jews say no to ethnic cleansing.”
by Rabbi Misha
It appears as though a shift has happened. Everyone I speak to is looking for the right way to act, to respond, to not respond. The old playbook doesn’t feel right. What we did in the past isn’t working. How we thought about the world was off. Though the work hasn’t changed, the methods may need to.
by Rabbi Misha
I've been sitting with my rabbi, Jim Ponet, and another of my rebbes, Elana Ponet for the last couple of hours studying Torah and discussing this moment politically, in an attempt to figure out what should go in this letter.
by Rabbi Misha
In a flash of gratitude that raised him from the muck of reality my Talmud teacher, Reb Dovid Neiberg let fly: “Where would be without Rashi?” Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, the 11th century French genius revealed to all the generations that followed him the hidden lights between the letters of the Torah that had been discovered by all the generations that preceded him.
by Rabbi Misha
An auspicious weekend is upon us.
It brings together four events with cosmic significance.
by Rabbi Misha
Thank God, it appears that we have made it through this war. With the help of the hidden forces of the universe we will likely live to see some of the hostages come home, the IDF withdraw from most of Gaza, and some type of sanity and safety return to the land of our ancestors.
by Rabbi Misha
I remember one of the first times I was aware of the love I had toward a friend. I was fifteen, and whenever I could I’d go out to Mevaseret, outside of Jerusalem to my friend, Erez’s house overlooking the wadi.
by Rabbi Misha
In Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, which Ezzy was assigned to read over break for his Hebrew school class, Reuven, the main character receives from his father a history of Hassidism.
by Rabbi Misha
The real story of resistance of this period in the Jewish calendar comes not from the Maccabees, but from the Parashah that accompanies the first few days of Hanukkah.
by Rabbi Misha
“I often think about our ancestors in Europe who would get pulled out of their homes in the middle of the night, or attacked in the streets of Germany, and imagine how different they would have felt if there were a non-Jew standing with them to protect them,” said Rabbi Arik Ascherman on Sunday morning.
by Rabbi Misha
This week we concluded our deep and illuminating communal study of Diaspora, led by our philosopher in residence, Dr. David Ponet, in which we read texts by Jean Amery, George Steiner, Edward Said and Hannah Arendt.
by Rabbi Misha
On Tuesday we brought Adam’s mother, Barbara to burial. Barbara was an extraordinary woman who lived fully and richly for 95 years. Though she traveled the globe once she was retired, reaching all seven continents, her home was always New York City.
by Rabbi Misha
Remember that tender moment in the Torah when Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt? I’ve been thinking about it this week.
by Rabbi Misha
Tuesday night at 11pm a Talmudic phrase flashed through my brain:
בִּשְׁעַת הַמַּכְנִיסִין — פַּזֵּר. בִּשְׁעַת הַמְפַזְּרִים — כַּנֵּס.
by Rabbi Misha
The world has gone mad. Human beings have abandoned morality. One person alone remains righteous and blameless. This person will save us from extinction.
by Rabbi Misha
I’ve been spending a lot of time with my brother, Tari, a Buddhism scholar from a mountain village near Jerusalem, whose been here for the last few weeks.
by Rabbi Misha
It’s like some kind of ancient spell. You say certain words, throw some ingredients into water, wear certain clothes and put your fist to your chest.
by Rabbi Misha
This week I’ve been getting excited. Yes, the world rages on. The stupidity knows no bounds. One of the worst leaders we’ve known is speaking at the UN as I write.
by Rabbi Misha
When you go to the theater there is one moment you can always count on to be beautiful, and that’s when the house lights go down on the crowd and the play is about to begin.
by Rabbi Misha
After ten days of probing, difficult questions, this morning’s Soul Math challenge quite literally cut to the chase. Excellent Jew that he was, Ibn Paquda offers an answer to the question of our purpose - in the form of another question: How much time are you wasting?
by Rabbi Misha
In a famous exchange between Gershom Scholem and Hannah Arendt following the publication of The Banality of Evil, Scholem accused Arendt of having no love for the Jewish people.