I hope you are all having a wonderful Hanukkah thus far. It is hard to believe that tonight we will already be lighting the 6th candle and only have two more nights to light our menorahs. It is in these moments where I am very glad that we follow Rabbi Hillel’s teaching of how we light the…
Well… this feels a little like déjà vu all over again with the recent Stay-at-Home order put in place by Governor Newsom over the weekend. However, besides not being able to dine outside, or get a haircut or a manicure, there is nothing real difference between what we were expected to av…
Before I go any further, I hope you and your family had a good Thanksgiving, given the circumstances which we have been facing. I know that it was most definitely not the Thanksgiving you envisioned having this year as you left last year’s festivities. And if you are like me, with Hanukkah…
Let me first begin by wishing you and your family a very happy Thanksgiving. We have so much to be thankful for, even as we are now in the midst of our ninth month of this pandemic.
Now, I know that for so many of us, this year’s Thanksgiving celebration is not going to be how we envision…
Before I continue with my column, I want to do something I have suggested in previous columns and that is to breathe. I say this because I feel like we keep getting bombarded with one crisis after another. In fact, since March I feel like we have only been in “crisis mode.” And by crisis…
It is important to remember that Character Counts
Each month, as I sit down to write my From Where I Sit column, I often struggle to figure out what I want to write about. One of the challenges is that since this JLife SGPV is a monthly magazine, I am not able to address “current even…
What a year 2020 has been. Each time something has come up, I have heard a few people jokingly say that they did not have that on their 2020 bingo card. It seems like we have been faced with more this year than in years past. And for all of these things to take place while we have been fac…
Something new for the High Holidays
I remember at the start of every school year how excited I was to go school supply shopping and pick up that year’s necessary items that would set me on the path to an incredible year of learning. Trapper Keeper… check. Ticonderoga number 2 pencils……
Over the past several months, one word has been floating around in the air, and that word poked its head out in a very big way this past week. That word is…patience.
If you think about it, we have been asked to be patient as the world deals with a pandemic, the likes of which have not…
Tomorrow marks the 25th Anniversary of Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination. This attack, following a peace rally in Tel Aviv’s Kings Square, was carried out by a far-right Israeli extremist who believed that through Rabin’s efforts to make peace with the Palesti…
Today marks the second anniversary of the horrific shooting that took place at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. This was the most violent attack on Jews in American history. Eleven innocent people who were at the synagogue to celebrate Shabbat were murdered, while six others were in…
Over the weekend, I was listening to a couple of interviews with Dr. Anthony Fauci about the impending COVID-19 spike we are either currently seeing or will soon be seeing. He and other health officials have been saying that they were concerned with a spike in the fall and winter because as …
Finding Joy and hope in the time of COVID-19
When our world was turned upside down back in March, my staff and I started discussing what we could do to help our community. Having lived through many crises in Israel, Kim Banaji shared with me one of her most memorable images. It seems that d…
I am continually amazed at the interconnectedness of our world. This feeling of interconnectedness has really only existed, in my mind, for the last 20-25 years. Before that time, we were not as intimately aware of what was transpiring on the other side of our planet, nor do I think many of …
Recognizing All the Amazing Women in Our Lives
As you may be aware… one of my favorite days of the year is National Doughnut Day. This “day” was established long before any of the other days like National Talk Like a Pirate Day or National Pizza Day. And I am pretty sure it even pre-d…
