Dear Friends: The holiday of Purim is this coming Monday night and Tuesday. Hazzan Komrad and I will be leading our service and celebration in the Sanctuary beginning at 7 pm. The service will be on Zoom as well but of course if you can make it in person you are encouraged to do so. Please enter via the wooden Sanctuary doors rather than the glass doors by the office. Security will be present so please either bring your blue laminated Kehilat Shalom member card or remember th

Dear Friends: My grandfather, after whom I was named, was literally Hymie from Hymietown. When he was born in Ilya, Belarus, he was given the name Chaim Leib, but when his family came to the United States his first name was Anglicized to “Hyman” and he was known by the nickname “Hymie.” And like many Jewish immigrants of that era (he came to the United States in 1910 at age 17) he lived from his arrival in the US until his death in New York City -- which is also where he is b

Dear Friends: Item: On Tuesday morning of this week, antisemitic graffiti was discovered at Shaare Tefila synagogue in Olney. The main sign of the shul was spray painted with a swastika and “AZAB.” Two other signs, one expressing support for Israel and one which says “Hate Has No Home Here” (the same sign I have in front of my house) were also spray painted with “AZAB.”  “AZAB” reportedly stands for “All Zionists Are Bastards.” Remember that a synagogue was vandalized with th

Dear Friends: Tomorrow morning we read Parashat Yitro which contains, among other things, the revelation at Sinai. Over the years Keleigh and I have often, though not always, sponsored a kiddush on the Shabbat of Parashat Yitro because it was not only my Bar Mitzvah reading but my father’s as well. I discovered a few years ago that in an interesting quirk of the relationship between the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars, my father’s birthday is exactly a week earlier than mine o