Bylined opinion and news columns published by United Hebrew Congregation Terre Haute.
As I was thinking about a topic for this month, the title of one of my favorite novels came to mind, Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Coronavirus is our modern-day cholera or plague. To say the least, we live in interesting times.
And these times call for creative ways to stay connected. We have begun to make those connections by purchasing a Zoom videoconferencing account for our Temple community.
Since I began as your student rabbi this past September, these monthly columns for my beloved congregants at United Hebrew Congregation have offered a breath of fresh air from the arduous papers assigned in rabbinical school.
But most importantly, this space has served as an outlet to express precepts our tradition teaches in relation to our everyday lives. I have found deep joy in the hope that my words might provide comfort, significance or an opportunity for learning.
Lately, however, I have struggled to compose thoughts that might bring meaning to your lives and the lives of your loved ones, amidst the challenges we all face daily during this pandemic.
During my first semester in graduate school, I took a class on religion and politics. My professor practiced the Muslim faith. The morning after the 2016 presidential elections, he shared with the class that his six-year-old daughter had asked him over breakfast, “Daddy, today at school, should I tell people I’m not Muslim if they ask me?”
During a discussion on Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness as part of a new social and racial justice program at The Temple in Atlanta, a woman described what she taught her children about “the protocol for being pulled over as a black person by the police.”
I am not a parent, and I do not judge any of these mothers and fathers for the way they answered their children’s questions or instructed them on how to behave in specific instances.
So many of us travel to warmer climates during winter to escape the cold. This year, Dick and I made our escape with a cruise to the Caribbean.
During this most recent cruise, we joined 30 passengers for Erev Shabbat services on ship led by a gentleman from Mobile, Ala. Yes, there are Jews in Alabama!
On Saturday morning, about half those from Friday’s session joined Shabbat services at Mikve Israel-Emanuel Synagogue, 40 miles from the Venezuelan coast on the Dutch Caribbean Island of Curaçao.
The synagogue was consecrated in 1732 and has been in continuous operation ever since, making it the oldest in the Americas.