Throughout the Jewish world, Shabbat Shemot is the Sabbath on which the opening chapters of Exodus, verses overflowing with action and mystery, are read in our synagogues. I am particularly drawn to the first 15 verses of the …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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1/30/15
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“In 1971, I met a boy who changed my life forever. I was ten and he was twelve, when for a few indelible months, we roomed together in a British-style boarding school perched on an alpine meadow high above Geneva.”
So begins a personal …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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1/16/15
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Israel’s new president, Reuven Rivlin, is certainly not a leftist; nor is he a liberal or a centrist. By most accounts, he is a reliably right-wing politician. He is not in favor of the “two-state solution;” he prefers some form of …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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1/2/15
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They came from Jamaica, Namibia, Brazil, England, Peru, Ecuador, Germany, Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, Thailand, India, The Philippines and Korea; and they are all proud and accomplished Rhode Islanders. Once they were struggling …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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12/18/14
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“The morning that Mendel Muskatev awoke to find his desk was gone, his room was gone and the sun was gone, he assumed he had died. This worried him, so he said the prayer for the dead, keeping himself in mind. Then he wondered if one was …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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12/4/14
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Psalm 137 – at least its first six verses – is one of the best known and best loved of our 150 psalms: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we thought of Zion. /There on the willows we hung up our lyres, /for our captors …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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11/21/14
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Rabbi Andrew Klein began his Rosh Hashanah morning sermon at Temple Habonim in Barrington with the following true story:
“When our youngest niece, Jesse, was 6 or 7 years old, she came to spend a few days with her uncles in Rhode Island. On …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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11/7/14
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My undergraduate years at Columbia, 1962-1966, corresponded with the height of the folk-singing craze which, centered in New York City’s Greenwich Village, spread throughout the land. Armed with my guitar and my long-neck 5-string banjo, I was a …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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10/23/14
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This past Sept. 18, AT&T Connect Event Services sent the following confirmation to my inbox: “You have registered to attend Annual POTUS High Holiday Call with Rabbis on Sept. 22, 2014, at 3 p.m. Eastern time.” POTUS: President of the United …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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10/20/14
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In March 1973, Rabbi Samuel Korff delivered a eulogy for Charles Shumrack, a longtime member of Congregation Kehillath Jacob who was murdered in his first-floor apartment in the Boston neighborhood of Mattapan. In the course of his remarks, “Korff …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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9/30/14
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