(delivered by Rabbi Maderer at Shabbat service 12/18/16) Last week I shared with you a time when I lived in the suburbs and my family overdid it in the area of home security. I made fun of the way that, even with a burglar alarm in our house, we added...
(delivered by Rabbi Maderer in Shabbat Service 12/9/16) Years ago when I lived in suburban NJ, there was a break-in in our neighborhood. We already had a burglar alarm in our house, so we added to the front porch the only extra security measure we could think of: a...
Last month, I had the opportunity to watch the movie E.T. as the Philadelphia Orchestra performed the John Williams score live with the screening of the film at the Kimmel Center. It had been years since I had seen Steven Spielberg’s imaginative masterpiece about a lost alien who is befriended...
delivered by Rabbi Jill Maderer, Yom Kippur, Congregation Rodeph Shalom A story I love, from Rabbi Nachman of Brazslav. A young woman visits her family and shares that she has become a master in the art of menorah making. She asks her parents to invite all of the...
There are people whom we witness from afar, who make an imprint, and whose stories even mark the stages of our own life and growth. I have a sense that this kind of impact, that defines moments in our lives, for some of us has been discovered through our encounter...
To what degree do you feel like you live in a bubble of people who are just like you? How often do you encounter people who challenge your assumptions, stretch your understanding? In his article, “How 26 Tweets Broke My Filter Bubble,” B.J. May writes “I live in a small...
Delivered this Shabbat in anticipation of former Congressman Patrick Kennedy’s upcoming talk at RS about mental health/addiction parity and de-stigmatization. At some point during my adolescent years, my father came home with a package and presented it to my sister and me. It was a box of 1000 red pencils,...
Did you see or hear Stevie Wonder present an award at the Grammy broadcast last week? He opens the envelope. Then with everyone on the edge of their seats to hear the winner of that category, he turns his opened envelope towards the audience, to show us all the braille,...
Last week, Dr. Dan Gottleib of WHYY hosted his final weekly Voices in the Family. He focused this final show on gratitude. As callers thanked Dr. Dan for giving them something– courage or patience or thanks… he responded: “I don’t give anyone anything that isn’t already there. It’s about seeing what’s...
Can you see what this image, created by Anya Ulinich (speaking Sunday at RS) depicts? A woman dressed in a business suit riding a Shabbat candle-fueled challah! The picture serves as an illustration for Susan Pashman’s column in the Jewish Forward, “My Big Sabbath Lie–And the Joy It Brought. When Susan Pashman first...
