Mishkan Blog
We Show Up
Rabbi Steven's sermon given on Rosh Hashanah 5782 Back in June, I was about to head home from work when my husband texts me: “Could you take your kippah off when you’re on the train?” A Jewish man had just been the target of an antisemitic attack in Brooklyn. This was...
To Life, to Life, L’chayim?
Rabbi Deena's sermon from Erev Rosh Hashanah 5782 In her book “The Art of Dying Well”, journalist and motivational speaker Katy Butler writes that Western medicine has become focused on one, single metric: “not dying". The medical system, propelled by mostly well...
Commemorating Juneteenth
This Saturday marks Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating June 19, 1865, the day the enslaved people in Galveston, Texas learned that slavery had been abolished, a full two years after the Emancipation Proclamation and six months before the passage of the 13th...
We Are Not Destined for Endless Conflict
My grandmother’s brother and sister walked from Germany to Israel. In 1938, they left Breslau (which is now a part of Poland) and walked to Greece where they took a boat to British-mandate Palestine. As my grandmother would tell it, her siblings took a boat in the...
Police Brutality: An Issue of Religious and Moral Concern
“Now is the time for people of conscience to come together to transform our justice system into one that is actually just. That means reimagining community safety, working to demilitarize and divest from police departments, and to dedicating significant resources to...
Welcoming Back Rabbi Steven Philp
It is with much excitement that we share the good news that our rabbinic team is growing! We are thrilled to share that Rabbi Steven Philp will be joining Rabbi Deena Cowans and myself to help us expand our ability to teach, preach and reach as many people as possible...