Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, Ph.D. wrote a series of prayers for the Family High Holy Day Services. This is the 3rd in the series. HOPE God of all people, Eternal One of the universe. We pray that Your presence will be part of our lives, today and everyday as we enter...
Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, Ph.D. wrote a series of prayers for the Family High Holy Day Services. This is the 2nd in the series. FORGIVENESS God of my ancestors, God of all people, On this Day of Atonement, teach me to be more forgiving of others and myself. Forgiving can...
Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, Ph.D. wrote a series of prayers for the Family High Holy Day Services. This is the 1st in the series. THE NEW YEAR Our God and God of our ancestors, as the New Year 5781 begins, we turn to You. Guide us as we move forward...
The first part of this week’s Torah portion, Shof’tim (Magistrates) begins by providing a constitution for the state, which our ancestors were instructed to set up in the Land of Israel at the end of the Exodus. It provides for two branches of government, executive and judicial. On the other...
Yesterday, I met Cantor Amy, Ross Levy (videographer), Adam Guth (sound engineer), Jeff Miller (trumpet and shofar) and Marlene Adler (photographer) to tape the Shofar segments of the High Holy Day services and take pictures for the holy day videos. It was just six of us in our giant 900 seat...
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and American Jews have a long-shared history. Last week’s viciously anti-Semitic posting by Minister Rodney Muhammad, head of the Philadelphia Chapter of the NAACP, has thrown relations between Americans Jews, African Americans, and the NAACP into disarray. First and unequivocally,...
Both the Torah Portion (Pinchas, Numbers 25:10) and the Haftarah (I Kings 18:46) include expressions of extreme (religious) violence. In the former, Pinchas, a grandson of Aaron, publicly slays a mixed couple. In the latter, the prophet Elijah, some four centuries later, slays the priests of Baal and then dismembers...
Despite the fact that the Constitution of the new State of North Carolina required that the holding of public office required both a belief in the “truth of the Protestant religion” and the “divine authority” of the New Testament, Jacob Henry (1775-1847), a Jew, was elected to the North Carolina...
At this moment of extreme racial tension in the United States, it is important to reopen the books and recall an almost entirely unknown story involving the emergence of the Ku Klux Klan in 1868 in Tennessee. The Civil War had ended just three years earlier but smoldering racial resentments...
