JewsByChoice.Org

Hear, O Israel: HaShem is our G-d, HaShem is the One and Only. You shall love HaShem your G-d, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your resources. And these matters that I command you today shall be upon your heart. You shall teach them thoroughly to your children and you [...]

Hi all,
I’ve been spending lots of time home with my family since the arrival of our new daughter, Nadia (I’ll tell you her Hebrew name after the naming ceremony!), and recently I had a pretty deep discussion with my older two daughters about creation, the Bible, dinosaurs, and how all of that can get really [...]

Some thoughts on this weeks Torah portion: Sh’lach L’cha.
20 And the Lord said, “I pardon, as you have asked. 21 Nevertheless, as I live and as the Lord’s Presence fills the whole world, 22 none of the men who have seen My Presence and the signs that I have performed in Egypt and in the [...]

Hi all,
Well, as some of you know I’ve been a rather infrequent visitor lately, let alone contributor. Hopefully I’ll be around more frequently now. But feeling a little uninspired (writing all day at work on grant proposals will kill one’s ability to think creatively ;)), I thought I’d share some websites I like, [...]

This past Shabbat we read the Torah portion of קדושים, referred to commonly as the Holiness Code. Friday night our intern gave a sermon that referenced the fact that God commands Moses to speak to the entire congregation of Israel (kol adat Yisrael) and not just the children of Israel (b’nei Yisrael) that we usually [...]

It was two years ago, nearly to the day, that I became Chaviva bat Avraham v’Sarah. I say became, but it’s true that I didn’t really become anything other than the person I was meant to be and had always been, the person hidden and seeking, finally come home to Torah and her people Israel. [...]

Hi all,
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ethics of speech from a Torah perspective, and particularly, how they relate to disagreements among adherents to different streams of Judaism. From time to time these conversations happen on this blog, and they certainly happen elsewhere on the Jewish internet. Personally, this is an [...]

This week is Parshat V’yikra, the first section of Leviticus. It is also Shabbat Zakhor, the Shabbat of Remembrance, one of the four special Shabbatot before Pesach. As the name implies, the theme is remembrance, and specifically, we are to remember the crimes of Amalek against the Israelites as they journeyed in the [...]

I will be leading Torah study at my temple this week; Dan Nichols is in town a artist-in-residence and there will be a Tot Shabbat before Saturday morning services, thus occupying my rabbi during our Torah study time. Usually our intern would just take over, but he will be out of town for placement interviews, [...]

Shalom all,
I found an interesting article this morning on the JTA website. It describes the role that Australia’s Jewish population played in bringing forward Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s formal apology to the Aboriginal people for country’s role in destroying Aboriginal culture and families. As a religious Jew who is also a graduate social [...]