It is a rare and unique ritual in the Passover Seder to recite Hallel at night - at all other times of the year it is not something we ever do. What is more, we recite half of Hallel before the second cup of wine and the other half before the fourth cup of wine. The secret to understanding why…
The Rabbis taught that there are ten reasons why a person contracts tzara'at: idolatry, sexual immorality, murder, desecrating God's name, cursing in God's name, stealing from the public, stealing something belonging to someone else, arrogance, gossip, and viewing others in an unnecessarily negative light. While often translated as leprosy, tzara'at was a growth that afflicted skin, hair, clothing, and stone walls. It…
By Webmaster
Scholarship generally agrees that the institution of the ancient synagogue was shaped by larger social, material, cultural and religious contexts. The impact of the surrounding culture on the Jews in the Greco-Roman and Byzantine worlds was significant. We can be certain that no area of Jewish life was immune to these influences which were of an infinite variety. The Jewish…
By Rick Chess
Does the imagination play a role in spiritual experience, I asked. How about in religious experience? On a Thursday morning late in the semester, a dozen undergraduates–honors students–and I gathered in a circle in the Laurel Forum, a room with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves along one wall, another wall all windows opening onto the campus quad. A gas fireplace, unlit now. Upholstered…
Being in physical form means that we are always on the boundary between life and death. There are moments in which this reality is not in our conscious awareness, and then there are moments in which it is very present and real. The system of sacrifices is a practical meditation on precisely this tightrope that we walk - in order…
I'll never forget my first day in Asheville. 1997, standing in the parking lot of the French Broad Food Co-op thinking, "I will live here one day." Throughout my years at Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in L.A., I often thought of Asheville and CBI. Danielle and I were married in Montford. Our aufruf (when the groom is called to the Torah) was in the small CBI chapel. To be honest, I never envisioned being a pulpit rabbi - I love community organizing and non-profit management - but if there was one place I would want to be a pulpit rabbi, I knew it would be here. (read more)