You may be wondering why you are not hearing anything about the Gamliel Café or the Taste of Gamliel series. It is mostly because we aren’t talking about them! As of December 2019, we transitioned from the structure you were familiar with and knew to a new and exciting new approach. Those series you knew are now no longer offered in the format you knew. Instead, we have modified our offerings, and have revamped the structure and how we …
Category: Death
No matter how old we are, no matter how much experience we have had with death, it is sudden death that some people feel hits us the hardest. During my 43 years in the rabbinate, I have sat with too many families who had to deal with the sudden death of a spouse or child, a friend or acquaintance. The initial response is usually that it defies belief—“that can’t be true!” A secondary response that is common is regret—“I didn’t …
One of the questions I am asked the most by Christians is whether or not Jews believe in Heaven and Hell. I tell them that Jewish tradition believes in life after death, but does not really use the words “heaven” and “hell” these days to describe places of reward and punishment. Instead, the phrase “The World-To-Come” (“Ha Olam HaBa”) in Hebrew is the one that appears most frequently. One of the questions I am asked most by Jews, too, is …
Why join a Chevrah? Why now? This essay seeks to address these questions from two angles, one global and one personal, as well as to explore the intersection of the two. First the personal. My father died in 1999, my mother in 2012. In both cases I felt compelled to find ritual means that would allow me to honor their individuality and the specificity of my connection to them. The idea of handing things over to “professionals”, whether a …
I think this may be a story of control submitting to grace. But first some background. For six years now, my synagogue, Beacon Hebrew Alliance in Beacon, NY, has built a sukkah in a public park on Main Street. Each year there’s a different theme, with programming reflecting that theme. This year, for a variety of reasons, the sukkah almost didn’t get built. But as Sukkot approached, the loss seemed too great, and we rallied to get it done, this …
It’s the bodies that haunt me. Each tells a story, shares a history. Scars from cuts or C-section births, bruises from blood draws or recent falls, surgical incision lines. The first Meitah (deceased woman) I saw with her mouth agape and her body wrinkled, was in her 90s. As a new member of the Chevrah Kadisha (CK), I was given the job of holding the meitah’s head while others performed the rituals of Taharah (ritual purification). I felt awkward …
My Uncle Harry died in March of 2002. I had gone to Kansas City to visit my parents and, hopefully, to help them move from an apartment into an assisted-living facility. Between the time I had made my travel plans and the time I arrived, my uncle had been hospitalized for what the emergency room doctor thought was a heart attack. In doing their morning check-in, the nurses at the assisted-living facility to which my uncle had moved in October …
Now that we have passed the annual Selichot service, and we are about to enter into the days of awe, it is again time to pause and take stock, review where Expired and Inspired has been, where it is, and where it is going. It is appropriate – Elul is a time of introspection, retrospection, and prospection. Expired and Inspired began as a concept in early 2014 as a way to share some of the experiences, thoughts, emotions, and …
Not uncommonly, in my work over the years in nursing homes, hospitals, and assisted living centers, I encounter someone who will say to me, “Rabbi. Why hasn’t God taken me?” It is a question, you can imagine, that is unanswerable. All I can do is take a hand, be silent, and look into the eyes of the suffering one, with compassion, trying to understand the gamut of their feelings: that there is no longer joy in remaining alive, either due …
I am honored to be asked to write for the Kavod v’Nichum Blog. Since this is my first entry, I wanted to introduce myself to you—at least in terms of what I believe as a rabbi and a mourner. Like you, I am involved with doing mitzvot before and after a death occurs. It is important for us to be clear about what we believe and how it affects what we do. Despite my faith in life after death, I …