A few weeks ago, seventeen of our Mishkan community members, including members of our staff and our rabbis, took part in the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs’ racial justice training for Chicago-area congregations on a rainy Sunday, over Zoom (like all things nowadays). As a spiritual community, we had already gathered a small group back […]
By: Rabbi Jessica Lott This week we begin to read the book of Bamidbar, the 4th book of the Torah, which, in English, is called Numbers. This is because the first instruction God gives is for Moses and Aaron to conduct a census. The Israelites have come to the point in their wanderings in the […]
As conversations begin to turn to what ‘opening things up’ will look like in the weeks and months to come, I find myself with a new anxiety around the question: “Have we learned our lesson yet, being in this little ‘time-out’ indoors? And not even in a punitive way, I’m thinking of the term yeshiva, […]
Michael and Doug’s wedding in March. The first of many joyful occasions through Zoom that enabled hundreds of people to celebrate together virtually. To watch Friday Night’s Shabbat Service, click here. One of the really hard parts of being a rabbi right now is witnessing the disappointment of the kids who had big plans, many […]
Earlier this week, in our morning minyan, Ilana Rossoff shared a very short poem by June Jordan that has been on my mind this whole week. It goes like this: There is no chance that we will fall apart. There is no chance. There are no parts. At this moment, it feels like everything is […]
With a lot of love, we will say farewell to both Rabbi Lauren Henderson and Rabbi Jeff Stombaugh in mid-June. Rabbi Lauren recently accepted the position of Senior Rabbi at Or Hadash in Atlanta. Rabbi Jeff’s two-year Jewish Emergent Network Fellowship is coming to an end, and he has recently accepted the role of Rabbi/Executive Director at […]
You might remember the story of Hanukkah in Billings, Montana in 1993. Years of anti-Semitic rhetoric, pamphlets, and talk from the local Ku Klux Klan chapter culminated in someone throwing a cinderblock through a Hanukkah-decorated window of a 5 year old Jewish child. There were about 50 Jewish families in this town of 80,000 mostly-white, […]
When I was in college and really starting to explore my Judaism and where I came from, I once asked my Dad, “How did your Southern, Christian family first react when they found out you were engaged to a Jewish woman from New Jersey?” And he told me this story: It turns out that my […]
There’s a famous story about a brilliant young man who entered Harvard Law School at the age of 18. It was 1875, a time of anti-Semitic discrimination and quotas. The young man was repeatedly told he could have an extraordinary legal career – maybe even serve on the Supreme Court – if only he were […]
I took my first trip to Israel in 2002 for two months, and at the end of the trip we took a survey about how our sense of Jewish identity had developed and changed during the trip. And the last question was: How important is it for you to marry someone Jewish? Very important, somewhat […]