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 on the Gregorian...

Dear Friends: News Flash: it’s cold. Really cold, Really, really cold -- water pipes bursting cold, frost bite-inducing cold. Having said that, some years ago Keleigh and I spent a few days in Saskatoon, Canada, where it is routinely this cold or colder. A number of Saskatooners said to us: “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.” Last Shabbat we held services on Zoom only. This Shabbat we are going back to our usual hybrid format and the Sanctuary will be open. We...

Dear Friends: The Conservative Movement made news in recent weeks with the report of the “Joint Intermarriage Working Group” -- “joint” because it had members from the Rabbinical Assembly, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, and the Cantors’ Assembly. You can read the report here.  The Executive Summary of the report is here. The report can appear self-contradictory in that it on the one hand maintains the ban on Conservative rabbis and cantors officiating at marriages where one...