Rabbi Weill's Blog

Dear Friends,

The Israelites seems to have perfected the art of complaining. In this week’s Torah portion, Hukkat, we find the Israelites STILL complaining. 

It was one thing for them to complain when they were newly freed slaves, for sudden freedom can be jarring and daunting. 

But now decades have passed. These complaining Israelites are not weak slaves. No, these were relatively young Israelites, strong...Read more...

Dear Friends,

My family and I recently engaged in an interesting conversation about immigrants. It is wrong, my daughter Ruthie asserted, to refer to any human being as illegal.

I suggested to her that the word merely describes reality, that people who come to this country through a porous border have, in fact, acted illegally, as have those who overstay their visas. Illegalsare those who have acted...Read more...

Dear Friends,

When we sat down at our seder tables recently, we took a break from the hectic secular world. 

Israel Zangwill (1864-1926), British Jewish writer and Zionist, captured the dichotomy of the world out thereand our ancient Passover rite in his poem “Seder Night in London.”

Zangwill’s poem is a sonnet: 14 lines in iambic pentameter (ten syllables), often with a thematic break after line eight....Read more...

Dear Friends,

Purim reminds us that we live in an olam hafuch, an upside-down world. To wit, in the book of Esther Mordecai rises to the position occupied by Haman, while Haman hangs from the gallows built for Mordecai, and the doom decreed for the Persian Jews is visited upon their enemies.  

On Purim we embody this upside-down world. Men dressing as women! Students teasing their teachers! Wild revelry...Read more...

Dear Friends,

One of my Koleinu band mates and I were talking this week, excited about our upcoming Koleinu service on March 8th. We both agreed that we would benefit from the spiritual uplift, camaraderie, sense of community, and just plain fun that the Koleinu service delivers each month. 

Aren’t we all in need of some of that by the time Friday evening rolls around? Let’s create Shabbat ruach/spirit and uplift for...Read more...

Dear Friends,

wisdom. His wisdom was "superhuman" because G-d poured it into him. This great divine gift endowed Solomon with an enormous breadth of knowledge and, according to our commentaries, the ability to apply one area of knowledge to another, to synthesize ideas and, of course, to solve seemingly intractable problems.

But Solomon possessed another quality that increased his wisdom even more. Our sages teach that Solomon...Read more...

Dear Friends,

Once again, Jacob has left the past behind. In Va'Yishlach, this week's Torah portion, twenty years after leaving Canaan for Haran, Jacob leaves Haran for Canaan, the land of his birth. On his way back home, before crossing the Jabbok River, Jacob must wrestle with a man. This man's identity is not clear to Jacob. Perhaps he believes the man is a river demon, a common motif in ancient literature. Jacob soon learns,...Read more...

Dear Friends,

The wise Abraham Joshua Heschel did not live to a ripe old age. He passed away in 1972 at 65 years old. Yet, wisdom does not necessarily depend on direct personal experience. It is born as well from a thoughtful, sensitive mind.

Heschel employed that sensitivity in his article To Grow in Wisdom. “The years of old age,” he wrote, “[are] rich in possibilities to unlearn the follies off a lifetime, to see...Read more...

Dear Friends,

Aaron has died. Miriam has died. Moses too will die before his people enter the Promised Land. In Pinchas, this week's Torah portion, G-d commands Moses to stand Joshua before the entire community and instill into the younger man some of Moses’s own spiritual authority. Earlier in the portion, Moses stands before the community with Pinchas himself, who eventually would become High Priest. For the Israelite people, new...Read more...

Dear Friends,

We are all excited for our Men's Club to lead our Shabbat morning services this Saturday, once again on Father’s Day weekend, just as our Sisterhood so ably led last month on Mother’s Day weekend.

Removing the Torah from the Ark is, for me, the heart and highlight of our services. The Torah tells the Jewish story, part one. That dramatic story continues with the admonitions of the prophets and the wisdom...Read more...

We, the undersigned members of the Niles Township Clergy Forum, believing in the sacred value of each human life, abhor the gun violence that has killed so many innocent people throughout our land.

In October we were shocked by the carnage in Las Vegas, the worst mass shooting in American history. Little more than one month later we were shocked again, this time by the murder of 26...Read more...

Dear Friends,

We are a rich congregation. For the sake of clarity, I mean that we are rich in spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally.  We are rich because of you and are particularly blessed with several rabbi congregants, enough to produce an Adult Education series called “Our Five Fab Rabbis.” These Sunday morning programs, occurring immediately after minyan, feature our rabbis as the fine teachers they are, teaching...Read more...

Dear Friends,

We read the Ten Commandments this Shabbat. We usually call them the Ten Commandments, but in Hebrew they are referred to as “aseret ha’dibrot,” the Ten Utterances.

While most of those “utterances” begin with a grammatical imperative (or command), the very first begins with a statement: “I am the Lord your God who took you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage” (Exodus...Read more...

Dear Friends,

The book of Exodus begins, “And these are the names of the Children of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob” (Exodus1,1). A list of the eleven sons who lived in Canaan with Jacob ensues, plus Joseph, who was waiting for them in Egypt.

The commentator Gur Aryeh teaches that these twelve sons, progenitors of the tribes of Israel, correspond to the twelve principle constellations in the night sky. Just as each...Read more...

Dear Friends,

Our prayers can be divided roughly into three categories: I praise you, G-d; I beseech you, G-d; and I thank you, G-d.

Today we give thanks.

Some say we must cultivate an “attitude of gratitude.” Judaism agrees, and perhaps nudges us even further toward a RADICAL attitude of gratitude. Our tradition points us toward a perpetual posture of appreciation. Why else would we pray three times each...Read more...