blogs/rabbigoldberg

Do you remember the scene in Fiddler on the Roof, when Motel gets the new sewing machine? “Rabbi,” he asks. “Is there a blessing for a sewing machine?” “There’s a blessing for everything,” the rabbi replies. In the film, the rabbi then prays in Hebrew: May it be God’s will that the Divine Presence rest in the work of your hands. Not a bad blessing for a sewing machine, actually.

We do have blessings for so many things...Read more...

I had the opportunity to visit Israel just after Purim this past spring, on a long-planned group trip through Daniel’s work. It obviously ended up being a very different kind of trip, to a very different Israel, than what we anticipated when we planned it a year prior. One of the most difficult, but also most...Read more...

Exactly 50 years ago today, the State of Israel faced an existential threat. While the KTI community assembled in this very room to observe Yom Kippur, including some people who are still with us today, Israelis faced their own “who will live and who will die” moment. In a surprising move, Israel found itself facing simultaneous attacks from Syria in the north and from Egypt in the west, an attack that caught most Israelis by surprise,...Read more...

Today, on Rosh Hashanah, you all see me standing here on the bimah. But that actually gives a misleading impression of what most of my days are like. On a typical day, I might go read a book to the children in our Early Childhood Program. They mostly pay attention, but it’s a long day, and they are only 3 or 4 years old, and sometimes they have trouble listening. Then, I might go teach our seventh graders in Religious School. They mostly...Read more...

My senior year of college, some Jewish students on my campus faced a dilemma. You see, Yom Kippur that year was a Saturday. It so happened that there was also a major football game at home that day, with the attendant tailgating and other events that made it a major social occasion. For me personally, this was not a conflict: I generally ignored the football scene to begin with, and would have made the choice to fast and be in...Read more...